Progress Toward Understanding and Treating Alzheimer Disease 

This presentation will use history as a guide to the breakthroughs and progress in understanding and treating Alzheimer disease. Alzheimer disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and affects nearly 7 million people. It is expected to double in frequency over the next 30 years. Alzheimer disease typically starts with increasing problems with memory, but will progress, typically over 6-15 years, to a loss of decision-making ability, recognition of places and people, an inability to take of themselves, and ultimately death. Unfortunately, current treatments have limited impact. We now know that many different genes are involved in Alzheimer disease, which along with age, sex, education, lifestyle, and ancestry, can significantly change the risk of getting Alzheimer disease.  

Dr. Jonathan Haines is the Mary W. Shel­don M.D. Pro­fes­sor of Genomic Sci­ences and Chair of the Depart­ment of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences (PQHS) at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine (CWRU SOM). CWRU’s School of Medicine is also the administrative home of the Cleveland Insti­tute for Com­pu­ta­tional Biol­ogy, which Dr. Haines founded and directs. The Institute is a collaboration between Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. The Institute collaborates with UH and area health systems to lead data analytics based on electronic health records to inform population health efforts and best practices in clinical care.