Participants needed for Madison-based brain scan Alzheimer’s disease study

WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAW) - The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison’s nationwide CLARiTI research study aims to find data that makes dementia-related diagnoses clearer, and more accurate.

Though Alzheimer’s disease has genetic biomarkers that allow doctors to diagnose 20 years in advance of the symptoms, other diseases that cause dementia do not have that same clarity.

That is where the CLARiTI research study comes in, short for Clarity in Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Research Through Imaging.

Researchers are looking for 2,000 volunteers who have cognitive impairment or are at risk of developing cognitive impairment to join the study. The first volunteer is Barbara Smith Ballen from Dane County.

Members of 35 Alzheimer‘s Disease Research Centers across the country who are over the age of 50 can participate in the study.

The process includes a baseline and follow-up phase that involves brain scans, like MRI and PET scans, as well as blood draws. The blood draws are a step towards linking the imaging on scans to the biomarkers in the blood.

“This study we hope will bring a lot of clarity to the way we diagnose this disease,” Principal investigator of the study and Professor at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health Sterling Johnson said. “Right now, there’s several diseases that can mimic Alzheimer’s disease, there’s also other causes of neurodegeneration that can co-occur.”

If doctors could more accurately identify other dementia-causing diseases through blood work early on, then their patients would have access to the correct treatments sooner.

“We often just have this diagnosis of dementia. Dementia is an umbrella term that means a person is no longer able to function the way they used to, but it doesn’t describe what’s the disease-causing dementia,” Johnson said. “That’s where we are. That’s the need that we have in our field and that’s going to serve our patients better. We’re gonna be able to treat them better, be able to get them aligned with the right therapy, with the right medicines, and the right expectations as well of what these therapies are going to do.”

Earlier this year, the National Institute of Health granted UW-Madison $150 million for the study, the largest grant the university has received from the institute.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health also want the research study to focus on the representation of many types of community members so that the developments from the study are applicable to everyone.

“We’re asking all of our centers that we’re working with to really join us in our effort. We are creating resources to make sure that our recruitment is inclusive and successful, and that our participants from communities that have been historically under-represented in research feel welcome and that they feel like they can trust the researchers enough to take part in this work,” Johnson said.