KANSAS CITY, KS—Stop Alzheimer’s Now, a non-profit organization founded by Shaun McDuffee in 2013, recently contributed $100,000 to the University of Kansas Alzheimer’s Disease Center, establishing the Stop Alzheimer’s Now Research Fund. Stop Alzheimer’s Now (SAN) has committed to walking across all 50 states to raise awareness and funds for research for a cure. To date, SAN has walked nearly 750 miles and raised over $215,000 through individual contributions and partnerships with organizations such as the Scott Richards North Star Charitable Foundation. The donation to KU will help support the ketogenic diet study, conducted by Dr. Russell Swerdlow. This study will offer essential data on how ketone bodies affect the brain. While ketone body levels can be modified through lifestyle adjustments, such as very high fat/low carbohydrate diets or dietary supplements such as coconut oil, it is unknown whether manipulating ketone bodies through a ketogenic diet has the same effect on the brain as producing ketone bodies without the aid of a specialized diet does. As both methods are being contemplated for prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, this study is hypothesizing that ketone bodies stimulated by a ketogenic diet will affect the brain differently than ketone bodies stimulated without a ketogenic diet. The study, to be conducted using groups of mice, hopes to impact how ketone body-based interventions affect the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, the decisions of physicians and patients regarding treatment options, how ketone bodies and dietary fat affects the brain, and the understanding of how different brain cell types respond to energy metabolism manipulations.
The University of Kansas Medical Center’s Alzheimer’s Disease Center has been actively involved in numerous clinical trials to find the next generation of treatments. In addition to the ketogenic diet study mentioned above, the Center was recently selected for renewal of the National Institute on Aging grant, which helps to fund the Center and makes it one of 31 designated Alzheimer’s Disease Centers in the United States. For more on recent activity at the KU Alzheimer’s Disease Center, visit http://www.kumc.edu/news-listing-page/the-ku-alzheimer%E2%80%99s-disease-center-renews-national-designation-expands-research-and-partnerships.html.
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11/5/2019 08:55:43 pm
We can always choose to help other people and that is a gift that has no value. We are in a world where we need to help one another and love will bind us all and will make us stronger. The different trials that the person is facing is not that easy to handle, but with the right amount of support and prayers. I know that there is nothing that will get on our way. Alzheimer's disease is not a joke and this condition should always be treated with proper medication.
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