In a small office building tucked into the side of a Yonkers hill that rises over the Hudson River, doctors from Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine will team up to try and solve the mysteries of neurological diseases that affect the elderly.
The newly opened Montefiore Einstein Center for the Aging Brain on Executive Boulevard will provide care and conduct research into those disorders.
“What we”™re doing here, which is unique anywhere in the country, is to create an interdisciplinary center,” said Dr. Mark Mehler, who chairs the neurology department at Albert Einstein. “(It) allows us to study people with degenerative dementias, minimum cognitive impairment, or normal people that are just not as spry mentally when they”™re 80 as they were at 20, and to look at the ”˜super-agers,”™ people that at age 80 ”“ there are not a lot, but you meet occasional people ”“ that are as sharp as any 20-year-old.”
Aging-related neurological diseases are a growing health crisis, according to doctors close to the project. As the U.S. population ages, more and more patients will need care for neurological diseases.
“We”™re living in a society that is aging rapidly and you”™re talking about a tsunami of an epidemic that will engulf the health system at a level that no other disease will,” Mehler said. “If you look at actuarial charts, as you age, the proportion of the population that develops degenerative dementias goes up. If you live to be 80, greater than 50 percent will develop degenerative dementia; if you live to be 100, almost everybody will.”
Doctors at the Center for the Aging Brain have resumes highlighted by unique research into the neurological problems associated with advanced age.
“My own area of research is the relationship between the gait, walking, and the brain, and how that is affected as people grow older,” said Dr. Joe Verghese, the director of the center. “You get problems both with the way you think as well as the way you walk. And these are the same areas that get involved with a number of diseases ”“ Alzheimer”™s disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson”™s disease ”“ it”™s very vital to understand that link between gait and cognition.”
Verghese said tests of cognition can accurately predict dementia, but other indicators, such as walking patterns and biomarkers, have been identified. He and his researchers have developed a test for aging patients that mixes motor skills and cognition.
“We get people to walk and talk at the same time,” Verghese said. “It”™s a very cognitively demanding test, especially for older people who have reduced attention or resources. So if you have difficulty walking or talking, we”™ve shown that it”™s associated with a number of bad outcomes like falls, frailty and cognitive decline.”
Mehler said research performed at Einstein and Montefiore Medical Center is changing the previous understanding of how degenerative dementia and other age-related neurological diseases begin.
“We actually are involved in research that is beginning to show that these diseases don”™t start late in life, but actually start in early development,” Mehler said. “Because you have the gene from the time of conception, the disease starts then. We have a lot of evidence from (National Institutes of Health) grants that the disease alters the way the brain develops, the way the brain is patterned, the way neural connections are made, and it makes certain cells particularly vulnerable to undergo premature cell death, which is the sine qua non of these diseases.”
While research will be a large part of the activities at the Center for the Aging Brain, patient care will still be a major focus.
“This center will provide really critical, groundbreaking care. This meets an absolutely critical need,” said Dr. Allen Spiegel, dean of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “Through the partnership, we”™ll improve that fundamental care with groundbreaking research.”
The care provided to patients won”™t be limited to neurology but will cross disciplines, including gerontology, vascular neurology and the study of epilepsy, movement disorders and sleep disorders.
“I think we have tremendous potential to grow here and grow everywhere,” said Dr. Steven Safyer, president of Montefiore Medical Center. “It really is that kind of integration that gives us a future that we can be proud of.”
