Emory University announced on Tuesday that the Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing has received a $3.9 million grant to study Alzheimer’s disease. Funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the research will study the contribution of the oral microbiome to the disease.
An estimated 6.5 million Americans 65 or older are currently living with Alzheimer’s, a total predicted to grow as high as 13.8 million by 2060. While the cause of Alzheimer’s disease is not fully understood, scientists have uncovered a number of risk factors associated with the disease.
“There is a growing interest in the connection between periodontal disease and Alzheimer’s disease,” assistant professor Irene Yang, PhD, RN, told Emory University. “Yet, the mechanism underlying this association is unknown, and most studies have focused on a limited number of periodontal disease-associated organisms. A major obstacle in the field is the lack of a cross-kingdom – bacterial, viral and fungal – characterization of the oral microbiome of periodontal disease related to Alzheimer’s disease risk.”
Whitney Wharton, PhD, an associate professor at the School of Nursing, will join Dr. Yang in seeking an understanding of the connection between these two diseases. The researchers will study oral bacteria, viruses and fungi found in individuals at risk for Alzheimer’s disease in order to determine the relationship between the disease and a number of features that range from inflammation to social determinants of oral health.
“The study will leverage Wharton’s existing National Institutes of Health-funded cohorts, including racially diverse individuals at high risk for Alzheimer’s disease,” Emory University reported. “Generated data will inform more extensive NIH-funded studies and provide one of the largest and most comprehensive characterizations of the oral microbiome in a racially diverse sample of individuals at risk for Alzheimer’s disease.”
About the Author
