UCSD Researchers Receive 2 Major Grants To Advance Women's Brain Health

SAN DIEGO, CA — Two major grants are headed to UC San Diego researchers as part of a more than $50 million investment in women's brain health by Wellcome Leap CARE and other organizations.

According to the university, the awards will be granted over three years to investigate how menopause and hormone therapy might shape dementia risk in women and develop new tools for earlier detection of Alzheimer's disease.

"Women are at greater risk for Alzheimer's disease, but we still do not understand why," said Judy Pa, professor of neurosciences at UCSD School of Medicine and director of the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study. "These projects will help us better characterize what happens in the brain and body during midlife and menopause, and how those changes relate to later dementia risk. That knowledge is essential if we want to develop more precise, effective strategies for prevention and treatment."

The first award, from Wellcome Leap CARE, will fund two projects led by Pa and Iris Broce-Diaz, assistant professor of neurosciences at UCSD School of Medicine.

The hormone therapy project led by Pa will use large existing datasets to emulate a clinical trial, allowing researchers to study how women who initiate menopausal hormone therapy compare over time with similar women who do not. By analyzing long-term health and cognitive outcomes, the team "hopes to generate stronger evidence about whether hormone therapy may alter dementia risk and which therapies may be most appropriate for women with different menopausal experiences."

Broce-Diaz's project will build on advances in brain imaging, blood-based biomarkers and computational modeling to create a clinical decision support tool for physicians, the university statement said. The goal is to "help primary care doctors and neurologists identify patients at heightened near-term risk of dementia earlier, when interventions and planning may be most effective."

"Primary care doctors are often the first to recognize when something may be wrong, but they may not have the tools or specialty support needed to determine which patients are at highest risk for Alzheimer's disease," Broce-Diaz said. "We want to give clinicians better tools to detect who may be at imminent risk and who should be referred for further evaluation."

The second award, granted anonymously, will fund a new collaboration between UCSD, UC San Francisco and UC Santa Barbara.

This study, called the Longitudinal Menopause Project and spearheaded by UCSB, will recruit women ages 40 to 55 and follow them before, during and after menopause, creating what Pa says "could become a flagship program for perimenopausal brain health research in the United States."

"This is a chance to study women's brain health with a level of depth and precision that is missing from the field," Pa said. "By following women through the menopausal transition and looking across brain, body and behavior, we hope to generate evidence that can guide better care for generations to come."

The dollar amounts for the grants were not readily available.

— City News Service