Is it dementia? Dr. Jason Karlawish helps you identify the signs

Aging happens differently for everyone and forgetting some details for daily tasks is not always cause for alarm. But there are signs that you or a loved one are showing signs of dementia or other diseases, like Alziemer’s. Dr. Jason Karlawish published an article with AARP as part of their Disrupt Dementia campaign.

Dr. Karlawish a researcher on the Healthy Brain Research Network and the Cognitive Aging Communication Project, both funded supplements to the UPenn Prevention Research Center. He also serves as the director of the Penn Memory Center.  Dr. Karlawish writes about what to look for and the risks involved with allowing the disease to progress without intervention.

Read about the signs to look for and his personal experience with an aging parent here. Tweet about your experiences, using the hashtag #DisruptDementia and tag @AARP and @jasonkarlwish.

Advances in Alzheimer’s imaging are changing the experience of Alzheimer’s disease

Stites, S.D., Milne, R., Karlawish, J.
Alzheimer’s and Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment and Disease Monitoring

Volume 10, 1 January 2018, Pages 285-300

  • PRC Investigator, Dr. Jason Karlawish joined S.D. Stites and R. Milne to study how a bio marker-based diagnosis can help a patient during each stage of Alzheimer’s Disease. The stigma or shame that can come with the disease can affect how a patient feels about themselves. Dr. Karlawish and his colleagues explored how changes in the way a patient is diagnosed can help address these stigmas.

Read more about the Healthy Brain Research Network here.

PRC Researcher Jason Karlawish in Forbes: Alzheimer’s Disease Patients Aren’t Zombies

In Forbes,  PRC Researcher Jason Karlawish, MD, challenges the social stigmatizing of Alzheimer’s in an article titled “Alzheimer’s Disease Patients Aren’t Zombies; They’re People And We Need To Treat Them Like People.”  Karlawish said, ” The inspiration came from a class I taught this semester on the public health challenges of Alzheimer’s disease.  The students and I discussed the stories of Alice Munro and how they pull the reader in and out of different realities.  The lives of the patient and the caregiver aren’t a juxtaposition of the unreal versus the real.  They both live in the surreal.  The challenge of living with Alzheimer’s disease, whether as patient or caregiver, is to negotiate this “surreality.”

Scarcity of Alzheimer’s Doctors Harms Patients and Wastes Resources – Jason Karlawish, MD

In the February 9, 2017 issue of Forbes, PRC Researcher Jason Karlawish, MD, says the lack of qualified Alzheimer’s doctors is a significant problem in US healthcare.  “We need doctors to care for the millions of people who are losing their capacity to exercise their autonomy or who are at risk of losing that capacity. How will we do this?”   Asking ” how did one of the wealthiest and most technologically innovative nations reach this situation?” Karlawish identifies several impediments which drive providers away from specializing in Alzheimer’s. “Doctors are actors in the healthcare system they practice in. They’re economic actors. They follow the money. Better and more expensive drugs and diagnostic tests are one way to incentivize more physicians to become Alzheimer’s doctors. Loan repayments and affordable medical school tuition could help as well. But why should the costs of technologies and tuition drive this? We need to incentivize doctors to take care of patients. We should focus on quality care, and we need to do this now.”

Framing Alzheimer’s Disease as a Humanitarian Crisis: Jason Karlawish in Forbes

Writing in Forbes Magazine, UPenn PRC Researcher Jason Karlawish, MD, asks what it means when an Alzheimer’s patient loses the autonomy to live safely in his or her home and turns to adult day care, assisted living, or other types of facilities. “Refugees need asylum, and those exiled from their home by Alzheimer’s disease should be able to find safe harbor in these places,” says Karlawish. “We ought to view moving there not as a failure to care but as part of the story of leaving one home for another.”

Broadening our understanding of Alzheimer’s beyond the medical diagnosis is a next step, according to Karlawish. “Framing Alzheimer’s as a humanitarian crisis ties together the many diverse but interconnected sufferings: the millions of caregivers who struggle to make a typical day for the patients, struggle because their will to care is frustrated by a system ill-equipped to educate them about what to do, where to find care and how to pay for it. It explains how the causes of the Alzheimer’s crisis aren’t simply a biomedical problem in need of better drugs but a social, economic and political problem.”

 

VIDEO: Jason Karlawish on Understanding Alzheimer’s @Penn 2016 Alumni-Faculty Exchange

 

UPenn PRC researcher and Penn Medicine physician Jason Karlawish was one of the top Penn experts taking part in a day-long series of health research-related presentations for the 50th anniversary gathering of the Penn Class of 1966.

Karlawish addressed the challenges that Alzheimer’s disease presents to science and society. “The other area of research we’re doing, in addition to better ways to diagnose or treat the disease is to figure out better ways to learn how to live with the disease and address some of the emotional, social and cultural challenges we face as we push these diagnoses into increasingly more normal and non-clinically significant stages.”

Jason Karlawish on Ethical Challenges in Alzheimer’s Research

Jason Karlawish, MD with experts in cognitive aging research from six different countries addresses Ethical challenges in preclinical Alzheimer’s disease observational studies and trials: Results of the Barcelona Summit in the current issue of  Alzheimer’s & Dementia, the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

“To review and discuss the novel ethical challenges that need to be overcome for successful performance of trials in the preclinical stage of AD, a multi-stakeholder group met in a 1-day summit entitled “Ethical challenges of future Alzheimer’s disease clinical research” held in Barcelona in October 2014. This reunion was organized by the Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Center, the research institute where the Pasqual Maragall Foundation conducts all its scientific activities devoted to clinical research for the prevention of AD. This discussion group included experts from academia, including AD researchers and bioethicists, patients’ organizations and regulatory agencies. This article summarizes the outcome of that meeting, where these ethical and policy challenges were debated and recommendations to address them throughout the research process were proposed, discussed, and agreed”

Dr. Karlawish is a UPenn PRC Principal Investigator and leads the UPenn Healthy Brain Research Network.

Karlawish writes about Robin Williams’ Last Act And The Stigma of Loss in Forbes Magazine

In the November 7, 2015 edition of Forbes magazine, Jason Karlawish, MD,  Principal Investigator on the UPenn PRC Cognitive Aging Project and Healthy Brain Research Network, examines the public stigma of neurodegenerative diseases and how Robin Williams’ suicide brings to light how patients and their families deal with the implications of illnesses with progressive decline.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonkarlawish/2015/11/07/robin-williams-last-act-and-the-stigma-of-loss/

Cholesterol-Reducing Drugs and Memory Impairment: A Case of Detection Bias?

Reports on the association between statins and memory impairment are inconsistent.  To assess whether statin users show acute decline in memory compared with nonusers and with users of nonstatin lipid-lowering drugs (LLDs), UPenn PRC researcher Jason Karlawish and colleagues conducted a retrospective cohort study which compared 482 543 statin users with 2 control groups: 482 543 matched nonusers of any LLDs and all 26 484 users of nonstatin LLDs. A case-crossover study of 68 028 patients with incident acute memory loss evaluated exposure to statins during the period immediately before the outcome vs 3 earlier periods.

When compared with matched nonusers of any LLDs, a strong association was present between first exposure to statins and incident acute memory loss diagnosed within 30 days immediately following exposure. This association was not reproduced in the comparison of statins vs nonstatin LLDs but was also present when comparing nonstatin LLDs with matched nonuser controls. The case-crossover analysis showed little association.

The authors conclude by arguing that both statin and nonstatin LLDs were strongly associated with acute memory loss in the first 30 days following exposure in users compared with nonusers but not when compared with each other. Thus, either all LLDs cause acute memory loss regardless of drug class or the association is the result of detection bias rather than a causal association.

Read the article here.

Strom B, Schinnar R, Karlawish J. Statin Therapy and Risk of Acute Memory Impairment. JAMA Intern Med. 2015;175(8):1399-1405.

Healthy Mind, Healthy Wallet – Financial Wellness Fair for Seniors

On Monday, June 15, 2015, the Philadelphia Financial Exploitation Prevention Task Force with the Penn Memory Center presented

Healthy Mind, Healthy Wallet:  A Financial Wellness Fair

at the First Corinthian Baptist Church, 5101 Pine St. Philadelphia, PA

Holly Lange, President, Philadelphia Corporation for Aging, Tigist Hailu, Coordinator for Diversity, Penn Memory Center, and Elsie Shelton, Community Outreach Director, First Corinthian Church

Protecting the Elderly from Fraud and Financial Exploitation

The Institute on Aging and the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania sponsored a conference featuring UPenn PRC investigator, Dr. Jason Karlawish. Dr. Karlawish highlighted the changes in brain function, which make it more difficult for seniors to manage their finances. Not only does cognitive decline affect math and memory skills, but it also impacts the ability to interpret the intentions of others. It puts the elderly at risk for abuse by scam artists, relatives, or acquaintances, In addition to the threat of poverty.

Most importantly, poor financial decisions can be a sign of dementia or declining brain health. However, Karlawish is among a group developing a new tool to help legal and social services workers. They will be able to assess whether older people are capable of making good decisions.

Read the article published in The Inquirer here.