Latest Updates From The Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI)

Main Category: Alzheimer's / Dementia
Also Included In: Neurology / Neuroscience
Article Date: 23 May 2009 - 1:00 PDT

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Alzheimer imaging aficionados thronged to back-to-back meetings held recently in Seattle for a preview of the latest data from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). Launched in the fall of 2004 and set to conclude next year, the $64-million ADNI is comparing imaging methods and fluid biomarkers in the same set of people to determine which measures can best predict and track Alzheimer-disease clinical changes over time. The project is approaching the homestretch of data collection. By the fall of 2010, ADNI scientists will have collected three years of longitudinal data from more than 800 participants (about 200 normal, 400 with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 200 with Alzheimer disease) at 59 U.S. and Canadian sites. The Seattle meetings featured preliminary analysis of the one-year data.

By and large, ADNI has helped identify a number of precise, clinically meaningful biomarkers that should be able to stand in for slower-to-budge cognitive measures, slashing time and cost from AD drug trials. "I think that ADNI is not only on track for meeting the goals we set out with, but we've added so many additional goals," said principal investigator Michael Weiner, University of California, San Francisco, in a post-meeting phone conversation with this reporter. "The whole project has become more ambitious and is having more impact."

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Source: Alzheimer Research Forum Foundation