Advances in the DIAN Research

On November 16, in St. Louis, I shared the Reiswig family story, The Thousand Mile Stare: One Family’s Journey Through the Struggle and Science of Alzheimer’s, with several hundred concerned, attentive people. Sharing the program with me were Dr. John Morris and Dr. Randall Bateman of Washington University in St. Louis. They head up the DOMINANTLY INHERITED ALZHEIMER’S NETWORK (DIAN), an international research project involving people who are in line for any of the three known genes that cause Familial Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease. Here’s what I learned from the meeting, and from a conversation with Dr. Bateman after the meeting.

The DIAN research stands poised to move beyond the IDENTIFICATION OF BIO-MARKERS of Alzheimer’s into a STUDY OF TREATMENTS for the disease. After the expected approval by the FDA, this opportunity to study potential treatments will happen nearly fifty years from the time my Aunt Ester May first said in the late 1960s, “Our family must pray, but we must also get involved in medical research.”

The DIAN research is designed to help both the people facing the genetic form of Alzheimer’s as many in my family are, and, ultimately, all people who face the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease.

Any interested person can contact the DIAN project, Wendy Segurdson:
sigurdsonw@wustl.edu
314.362.2256

Or contact me: gdreiswig@yahoo.com.

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