Targeting Neuroinflammation as a Contributing Pathology in Alzheimer's Disease Dementia and Related Dementias

Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia is a devastating illness with no cure. Treatments targeting known pathologic hallmarks of AD, such as amyloid-beta (AB), in symptomatic individuals have proved largely fruitless so other potential disease targets warrant exploration. Neuroinflammation has interesting possible associations with AD dementia and may contribute to AD dementia in different ways among different individuals. Previous PET neuroinflammation data are not entirely consistent and new methods of PET imaging and studies with larger cohorts are needed to further investigate the role of neuroinflammation in AD dementia and the utility of PET as a biomarker. This project seeks to test new PET neuroinflammation imaging methods in unimpaired, mildly impaired, AD dementia, and mild cognitively impaired and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) individuals with biomarker-identified brain pathology to help address these gaps in knowledge in the field.