The Alzheimer’s Association Conference (AAIC) 2024 took place in Philadelphia, USA, and our team, led by Professor David Ndetei, Dr. Christine Musyimi, and Victoria Mutiso, participated in the premier gathering of Alzheimer’s and dementia stakeholders.
Dr. Victoria Mutiso presented results from the READD-ADSP project, showing that our initiatives to reduce stigma resulted in a decline in negative attitudes about treatment and dementia care.
As a result, we have recruited 93 cases of AD and 92 controls within the READD-ADSP project in Kenya.
READD-ADSP project aims to improve Alzheimer’s disease genetic studies in underrepresented African ancestry and Hispanic/Latinx populations. Read more: https://afrimeb.org/readd-adsp/
On her part, Dr Christine spoke on the impact of the DEM-SKY program, which engaged community health promoters to screen over 3500 older adults for dementia in rural Kenya.
We gained valuable knowledge on the most recent Alzheimer’s disease studies and were able to exchange ideas with leading specialists.
AAIC is a highly esteemed conference for presenting and discussing the most recent research on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Over 14,000 people registered for the meeting in Philadelphia this year, and more than 5,260 scientific submissions were received, according to Alzheimer’s Association.
Some of the exciting developments from the conference is that Phase 2b clinical trials of a drug suggest it can protect against brain shrinkage associated with dementia and breathing wildfire smoke and eating too much-processed meat are bad for brain health and may raise the risk of cognitive decline and dementia.
It also emerged that the use of blood testing to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease is likely to become a reality soon. This could significantly improve diagnosis accuracy, facilitate clinical trial recruitment, and expedite the diagnosis and treatment of patients.
