Valley residents aid Alzheimer’s research
A group of faculty and students at Utah State University are working continually to help discover the path of healthy aging in Cache Valley.
The Utah State Center for Epidemiologic Studies is part of the College of Agriculture. It conducts research on county, state and national levels.
The center is doing an ongoing study called The Cache County Study on Memory, Health and Aging (CCMS), said Ron Munger, director of the center.
An important part of this study and others is looking at the role epidemiology plays. Epidemiology is the branch of science that conducts the methods for studying diseases in populations, Munger said.
According to an information pamphlet put out by CCMS, “The average life span of Cache County residents is among the longest in the nation. To better understand this success story, researchers at USU have been studying the health and memory abilities of Cache County seniors since 1995. Study participants and their family members are helping researchers to understand what lifestyle, environmental and inherited [genetic] factors lead to healthy aging and disease prevention.”
John Breitner, head of the division of gero psychiatry at the University of Washington, helped found the study.
“The world will be a different place as a result of our study,” he said in a news release in 1995, when the study began.
According to the release, the CCMS study focuses on three hypotheses:
* Certain genes may provoke Alzheimer’s in people who live to an extremely old age
* Occurrence of Alzheimer’s is maximal near age 80 and declines thereafter
* Specific environmental factors may reduce the incidence of Alzheimer’s before the age of 85
CCMS has linked common health problems and diseases, such as stroke, heart attack and diabetes to Alzheimer’s disease, a brain disorder, Munger said. Control of these common problems may help and inform future Alzheimer’s patients, he said.
The thing that has been amazing about the study, Munger said, is Cache County senior citizens reached 90 percent participation in a pilot study, which is significantly higher than most studies done in this age category.
“This remarkable participation rate reflects the excellent relationship between Utah State University and the citizens of this valley,” Bonita Wyse, a former dean of the College of Family Life and the other founder of the study, said in the news release.
Although the study is mainly about Cache Valley, there are many co-investigators involved around the nation. Besides USU, the University of Utah, BYU, Johns Hopkins, Duke, and the University of Washington have needed expertise for making the study successful, Munger said.
“[The study] involves a lot of different departments, such as mathematics and statistics, nutrition and food science, education, and psychology to work together towards common goals,” Munger said. “We want to provide a place for different disciplines to work together.”
According to a 2002 newsletter from the Center for Epidemiologic Studies, about 5,000 senior Cache Valley residents have participated in CCMS, and nearly 10 percent of them suffered from some form of dementia, a rate higher than those found in many previous studies.
“Dementia is a condition in which a person suffers from severe memory loss and other problems related to thinking and memory. The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease,” according to the newsletter.
The center started with the CCMS study and since has contributed time to other research that deals with healthy aging and family studies. The center has two other projects that deal specifically with the different types of dementia and depression among the elderly, Munger said.
“We wanted to learn the environmental and genetic factors in dementia by looking at an individual course that a patient might exhibit while being diagnosed with dementia,” said Joanne Tschanze, who heads the dementia study at the center.
Craig Gale, senior data manager/analysis at the center, said there are many opportunities for students to get involved. The center has undergraduate and graduate students who participate in many different ways in the studies that are conducted here.
“The talent pool at Utah State is extremely good,” Gale said. “Students are hired for specific specialties.”
The studies conducted at the center are more than just studies, he said. They are an outreach to help the elderly community understand their aging process.
Tschanze said, “The Cache County studies have made their mark in the scientific community in large part due to participants and their families, as well as health care providers and health agencies.”
–alwhite@cc.usu.edu