A Zoom presentation, but no new drug breakthroughs at AAIC ... so far

Yesterday a presented my story to my brother Hollis's church men's group in Virginia via (what else?) Zoom.  I was very well received, and the questions suggested that they heard my message.  I had bought plane tickets to present in person during February, but you can guess what happened to that.

As I mentioned earlier, the schedule for the week at the AAIC2020 "Amsterdam" conference has some presentations embargoed with the idea they will contain important news.  So we have drama.  There's only one day left, so I wonder if the big news isn't out already:

1. Flu/pneumonia shots reduce Alzheimer's disease risk
2. We're making progress on a blood test. 

Regarding blood tests, I heard people say that, when the blood tests come out, they should only be used to screen drug trial subjects.  There should not be general testing.  I'm guessing that's because they realize that a positive test means that you will never be able to get long-term care insurance, at least not the way the industry is currently structured.

There is another item that can probably be added to my list above, and that is what's been learned about the influence of bad health habits during youth on Alzheimer's disease risk.  It's huge.  Poor habits of diet and exercise in your teen years can double the risk of Alzheimer's disease in women and multiply it by 2.5 in men.  That's significant.  But what's the practical value?  Who's going to convince their kids to stop eating at McDonald's?

Now that I think about it, as soon as I had a job and could pay to eat out, that's all I did.  A hamburger was $0.15, fries were $0.11, and a milk shake was $0.20.  Who could ask for more?  Maybe this explains my current condition.

An underlying theme of most presentations was lifestyle.  Exercise, diet, social connection, etc.  You've heard it all before.  Sometimes this was explicit and sometimes tangential, but it was very often present.  This was in the absence of any drugs or other magic bullets to talk about.

This morning there was in interesting presentation about the measurement of Alzheimer's disease prevalence and measurement in the African American community.  The vast majority of the work done in Alzheimer's disease research has been with Europeans and Americans of European ancestry.  (And some Australians.)  This has led to overlooking some important things.  For example, the single most common genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease is the presence of the ApoE4 gene in your genome.  Turns out, that's only true if you're of European ancestry.  For African American's, many have that gene, but the level of influence is noise.  And she presented credible research on problems with how cognition is assessed among African Americans.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.