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courier-journal.com

It's well known that many great entertainers — Johnny Depp, George Clooney and Lionel Hampton, for example — have Kentucky roots. Not so well known, we suspect, is that the University of Kentucky is today a hotbed of cutting-edge research on Alzheimer's disease, for which there currently is no cure.

About 5.3 million people in the United States suffer from the brain-destroying disease, and the numbers are expected to skyrocket as millions of baby boomers age into the most vulnerable group. Most people die within four to six years after diagnosis.
Dr. Ronald C. Peterson, a Mayo Clinic researcher and head of the Alzheimer's Association's medical and scientific advisory committee, puts the urgency of the work that's being done at UK into perspective: “We have to do something about this situation soon or, as the baby boomers age, Alzheimer's disease alone will bankrupt the health care system.” Alzheimer's disease currently impacts the system to the tune of $148 billion a year.
Meanwhile, Dr. William Markesbery, a neurologist and neuropathologist, who directs UK's Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, is regarded as a leader in Alzheimer's research. His work, for example, disproved a once-popular theory about Alzheimer's cause, and he's amassed a large collection of donated brains for research that “is incredibly important,” said Tammy Johnston, of Lexington, whose parents both volunteered to donate their brains. It's another example of one generation contributing to the next.
Dr. Markesbery, 77, anticipates that we're five or maybe 10 years away from specialists being able to routinely detect changes in the brain that generate symptoms of the disease. Researchers' goals are eventually to prevent such symptoms from ever developing.
Whenever the time comes, it'll be a happy day. UK's work on Alzheimer's is just more proof that “Bucks for Brains,” which has been so instrumental in luring top scientists and medical researchers to Kentucky, continues, a decade later, to pay big dividends.
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