February 3, 2018
Itamar Kahn at The Chesterfield in Palm Beach. Photo by John Nelander
A researcher from an Israeli university offered fresh insight this week into medical conditions that threaten to overwhelm the health care industry over the next 30 years.
Itamar Kahn, an assistant professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, told a crowd of supporters Wednesday at The Chesterfield in Palm Beach that progress was being made in the search for a cure for brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
But he warned that predictions of a breakthrough in Alzheimer’s have proven premature.
“I remember an announcement that in 10 years Alzheimer’s would be gone,” said Kahn, director of the Brain Systems Organization in Health and Disease Lab at the Faculty of Medicine at Technion. “That was in 2002 – and it’s still here.”
New findings were reported in the journal JAMA Neurology earlier this week, linking disrupted sleep patterns and amyloid-beta protein in the brain to Alzheimer’s.
But a major hurdle, Kahn said, is that Alzheimer’s disease is likely not caused by just one thing. Although symptoms may be similar, there could be multiple triggers. Treatment that helps one person may not help another.
Projections are not encouraging. About 47 million people worldwide suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, and that’s expected to grow to 75 million by 2030 and 131.5 million in 2050, according to the Alzheimer’s Disease’s International’s World Alzheimer Report. The reason for the stunning growth rate is a rise in world population along with the fact that people are living longer.
“This is something that as a society we have to deal with,” Kahn said.
“When we look at people with symptoms, we want to find out if it’s all the same type or maybe something different,” he said in an interview. “It’s possible that some of the earlier clinical trials failed because we had a heterogenous population” – patients with similar symptoms caused by different problems.
“So, we have to improve the selection methods for clinical trials, and develop methods that will allow us to distinguish between the different sub-populations. It’s called precision medicine. We’re going to be more precise in our treatments.”
Technion was founded in Israel in 1912, long before the state was established. It originally focused on engineering, but in the 1960s they started doing medical research. Kahn’s expertise is in technology, and he uses new kinds of technology to study the brain.
For example, Technion helped develop and refine new MRI equipment that can analyze the functionality of a mouse’s brain. It shows ebbs and flows of oxygen levels, the key to communication within the brain.
“Our ability to look at the brains of mice with the same tools we have available for humans allows us to develop very sensitive diagnostic tests,” he said. “Then we can try therapies on these mice and use the results to leverage funding for clinical trials in people.”
The American Technion Society (ATS) has chapters throughout the United States that have helped support the Israeli facility with more than $2 billion in donations since 1940. Palm Beach chapter Co-President Sharon Pikus said she became involved because she was impressed with Technion’s level of research after a family member was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
“There’s nothing like it,” said Pikus, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens. The Technion facility in Haifa, Israel, is subject to bombing raids “and yet, they keep on trucking,” she added. “They’re so resilient.”
Some came to the evening program armed with specific medical questions, while others were interested in learning about Technion in general.
Resident Madeleine Singer said she shows up every time she hears about a Technion event.
“I think the people at Technion are some of the best innovators in the world,” she said. “The speakers are always fascinating.”
http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/lifestyles/health/israeli-researcher-discusses-alzheimer-crisis-palm-beach-event/RSBZokGsyP1NsvqDETw98K/
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