Alzheimer's research: Duke, UNC team up to seek medical breakthroughs in women's health
DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) -- In light of First Lady Jill Biden visiting Research Triangle Park touting advances in women's health, ABC11 is highlighting some local doctors already doing groundbreaking work.
Normally, Duke and North Carolina are arch-rivals -- especially this time of year. But they have teamed up for some cutting edge research that could save lives.
The Duke / UNC Alzheimer's Disease Research Center is funded by NIH to try and make breakthroughs in studying a disease that impacts so many families.
They're conducting research on risk factors for what causes Alzheimer's. While there is a genetic component, they also want to learn whether there are any lifestyle or risk factors earlier in life that can lead to Alzheimer's.
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That study is co-directed by Dr. Heather Whitson from Duke and Dr. Gwenn Garden from UNC. Whitson said there hasn't just been a gender gap among doctors, but also among the participants in these kinds of studies, and that's what they're hoping to change.
"I think that's why we need to do the research. There's still a lot of unanswered questions. Part of that is because there was a time in in medicine when most of the research was done on men, mostly white men. And so we have some lacking evidence base. We certainly started to correct some of that, although there are still great disparities in who's participated in research and who we've asked the questions about in research," Whitson said.
They are hoping to unlock causes of the disease from a younger age.
"We know that the genes only tell part of the story and for even those people that are born with risky genes, they tend to live six, seven, eight decades before they manifest the disease, so what we're really focused on is what's happening in early in midlife that transitions and opens the door to this disease. And we think that that's really where a lot of the unanswered questions lie," she said.
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Whitson also said while on average, women have a longer lifespan than men, they also have a longer number of years with disability and a higher risk for Alzheimer's.
As part of that ongoing Alzheimer's study, they have about half of their goal of 500 participants signed up. And age doesn't matter - they would like people as young as 25 who don't have Alzheimer's, so they can try and put together the pieces of what causes it from an early age.
