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Imaging Interactions between Alzheimer's disease and cerebrovascular disease SALSA Computer Based Therapy Imaging Brain Dopamine in Aging Imaging Gene Therapy Imaging Brain Amyloid in Vivo Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative
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The Sacramento Area Latino Study on Aging (SALSA) is a longitudinal epidemiologic cohort study of a group of older Latino individuals living in the Sacramento region in California’s Central Valley. In conjunction with colleagues at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Davis, we recruited and evaluated approximately 1800 individuals in 1998-1999. A substudy used MRI and PET scanning to evaluate anatomy and metabolism. The impetus for the study involved the fact that this group had never been surveyed for cognitive impairment and dementia, and also that there is a high prevalence of vascular disease and diabetes in the Latino community. Therefore, we were interested in evaluating how cognitive function, dementia, brain structure, and brain function were related to this relatively unique set of risk factors in an understudied community.
Our initial publications found that diabetes and stroke were by far the most significant predictors of dementia, much more important than genetic factors that had been reported in other populations. Furthermore, MR markers of vascular disease (changes in white matter) and AD interacted in increasing stroke risk significantly. Atrophy of the hippocampus, increases in WMH, and declines in glucose metabolism were detectable in participants with cognitive impairment without dementia.
We are currently continuing to follow this cohort with an interest in examining how MRI and PET predict longitudinal cognitive changes, and how other clinical variables such as diabetes, stress, and medical illness affect cognition and brain structure.
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