Do toxins at home, work raise dementia risk? UW researching links.
Madeline Heim
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
UW-Madison researchers will study thousands of brains to determine whether exposures to environmental toxins increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia.
Results of The Neighborhoods Study, which recently received a $30.9 million renewed grant from the National Institutes of Health, could change the way the world is able to respond to such debilitating neurological diseases, said Dr. Amy Kind, professor and associate dean at UW’s School of Medicine and Public Health and director of the study.
If her team can determine that a particular type of toxin raises dementia risk, she said, that could open the door to targeted therapeutics to decrease that risk.
“It’s one of these types of questions that is so profound it takes an entire community of people coming together to answer,” she said.
Kind said the medical community “desperately needs” a better understanding of diseases like Alzheimer’s, which affects an estimated 111,000 people age 65 and older in Wisconsin. She envisions a future in which these diseases could be detected so early that they could be prevented from ever manifesting.
“That is the shining goal of this work,” she said.
Madeline Heim covers health and the environment for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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