Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Journal of Alzheimer's Disease
Publisher
Springer
School
School of Medical and Health Sciences
RAS ID
27388
Abstract
Worldwide there are over 46 million people living with dementia, and this number is expected to double every 20 years reaching about 131 million by 2050. The cost to the community and government health systems, as well as the stress on families and carers is incalculable. Over three decades of research into this disease have been undertaken by several research groups in Australia, including work by our original research group inWestern Australia which was involved in the discovery and sequencing of the amyloid-β peptide (also known as Aβ or A4 peptide) extracted from cerebral amyloid plaques. This review discusses the journey from the discovery of the Aβ peptide in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) brain to the establishment of pre-clinical AD using PET amyloid tracers, a method now serving as the gold standard for developing peripheral diagnostic approaches in the blood and the eye. The latter developments for early diagnosis have been largely achieved through the establishment of the Australian Imaging Biomarker and Lifestyle research group that has followed 1,100 Australians for 11 years. AIBL has also been instrumental in providing insight into the role of the major genetic risk factor apolipoprotein E ε4, as well as better understanding the role of lifestyle factors particularly diet, physical activity and sleep to cognitive decline and the accumulation of cerebral Aβ.
DOI
10.3233/JAD-171145
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Comments
Martins, R. N., Villemagne, V., Sohrabi, H. R., Chatterjee, P., Shah, T. M., Verdile, G., ... & Hone, E. (2018). Alzheimer’s Disease: A Journey from Amyloid Peptides and Oxidative Stress, to Biomarker Technologies and Disease Prevention Strategies—Gains from AIBL and DIAN Cohort Studies. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 62(3), 965-992. Available here