Alzheimer’s disease and super agers changes in the eye

In the United States, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the 6th leading cause of death with 1 in 3 seniors dying with Alzheimer’s or dementia. Currently, diagnosis can only be made with invasive imaging or an autopsy. Early diagnosis of AD has remained a highly sought after but elusive goal. s. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been investigated as a potential tool for identifying markers for the disease. Funded by the ISPB, we have recently performed a study using OCT in subjets with aMCI and found an inverse correlation between cognitive function and OCT thickness, which suggests that the retina gets thicker as cognitive function declines. This finding could be related to development of gliosis or scarring in the inner retina as part of the pathology in MCI. This finding could explain the controversial findings in previous OCT studies. We are therefore requesting funding to enable us to use more advanced imaging technologies for high resolution imaging, adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope (AO-SLO) to obtain in depth view of the eyes of MCI patients to examine for scarring on the surface of the retina. In addition, we will extend the the research to include SuperAgers, who are a distinct population of aging subjects who perform better than expected for their age , and are comparable in their cognitive abilities to subjects that are 2-3 decades younger