We are always looking for new ways to detect Alzheimer’s disease early.
Amaryllis Tsiknia, neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Southern California, may have found a clue.
Faculty Bio:
Amaryllis is a 4th-year neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Southern California. She completed her undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley with a degree in Cognitive Science, and then acquired her Master’s degree in Neuroimaging and Informatics. Her current research uses neuroimaging techniques to uncover how metabolic and vascular factors increase our risk for dementia with a special focus on type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Transcript:
Alzheimer’s disease is often discussed in terms of amyloid plaques and memory loss. But changes in how the brain manages blood flow and oxygen may also provide important early clues about risk.
In our research, we studied older adults with and without cognitive impairment and looked at whether measures of cerebrovascular function were linked to known markers of Alzheimer’s risk.
We used two noninvasive tools while participants rested quietly. One measured how fast blood moves through the major arteries in the brain. The other measured blood oxygen levels in the brain tissue near the surface of the cortex. We then used mathematical models to summarize how well the brain adjusts blood flow and oxygen levels in response to normal changes in blood pressure and carbon dioxide.
What we found was notable. People with healthier vascular patterns, meaning blood vessels that behaved more like those seen in cognitively healthy aging, tended to have lower amyloid burden and larger hippocampal volume. The hippocampus is a brain region that is essential for memory, and smaller hippocampal volume is associated with greater Alzheimer’s risk.
We also found that people with mild cognitive impairment or dementia showed poorer vascular indicators than cognitively normal adults.
These findings suggest that cerebrovascular function is closely related to brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s risk and may be part of the disease continuum.
Just as importantly, these measures are relatively low-cost and noninvasive compared with some other brain imaging approaches, and they do not require injections, radiation, or active participation during testing.
This study does not prove cause and effect, but it supports ongoing work to test whether these vascular signals can help identify higher-risk individuals earlier and track brain health over time.
Read More:
[Keck School of Medicine at USC] - Novel markers of brain blood flow and oxygenation may offer early clues to Alzheimer’s risk
