Emory University

The silver tsunami of Alzheimer’s disease

Instructor leading a group of senior citizens in athletic stretches in a gym

Ten thousand baby boomers are turning 65 each day. This “Silver Tsunami” is driving researchers at Emory’s Brain Health Center to the frontlines of the fight against Alzheimer’s disease, one of this century’s most intractable health problems.

Allan Levey, MD, PhD, director of Emory’s Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) and chair of the Department of Neurology at Emory University School of Medicine says the widespread aging of the U.S. baby boomer population is driving the urgent need to focus on Alzheimer’s disease.

“We know that one out of every two or three baby boomers will develop the symptoms of Alzheimer’s in the next 20 years,” says Dr. Levey, “There’s a desperate need for non-invasive, affordable, and most importantly, widely available ways to help us improve detection at the earliest possible stages, and to follow this up with effective treatments aimed at prevention.

Under Levey’s leadership, Emory’s Goizueta ADRC has pioneered research programs that are helping drive forward actions to support the national plan for Alzheimer’s Disease and related disorders. The Goizueta ADRC is one of 30 centers in the National Institutes of Health ADRC network. The goal of these centers is to bring scientists together to facilitate their research and help learn more about Alzheimer’s and related diseases. They are also committed to the education of health care professionals, persons with Alzheimer’s disease, their families, and the community to aid in understanding, diagnosis and treatment of these illnesses.

The Goizueta ADRC conducts more than $11 million annually in industry-sponsored clinical trials, community outreach and education initiatives, federal research grants, and philanthropically funded research studies.

Dr. Allan Levey examining a senior woman
Dr. Allan Levey works with patients at risk of or living with Alzheimer's, and their families, hoping that clinical investigation paired with innovative research will provide answers and hope.

In 2015, Levey and his colleagues launched the Emory Healthy Aging Study and in 2016 the Emory Healthy Brain Study. The largest clinical research study ever conducted in Atlanta, Emory’s Healthy Aging study has enrolled more than 25,000 participants with the goal of learning more about the risk factors for Alzheimer’s and investigating a wide range of shared risk factors for other conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and hypertension.

The Emory Healthy Brain study is focused on the discovery and development of biomarkers that could provide the basis for clinical tests and help doctors predict Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias in middle-age individuals before symptoms begin. By taking a longitudinal approach, following participants over years, researchers in the Healthy Brain Study hope to fundamentally change the way Alzheimer's disease is detected.

Parallel ongoing studies are at the fore of national efforts to discover and test novel therapeutic targets. In the face of many recent failed clinical trials, there is urgency to improve understanding of the root causes of Alzheimer’s disease and to advance research into new treatments.

Levey says it is important that as many people, from as many different backgrounds, participate in Alzheimer’s disease research in order to have ample data for comparisons across demographics. He underscores the need for research participation among African Americans, who are two times more likely to develop Alzheimer's than whites.

“The goal of our research is nothing less than a paradigm shift in the future diagnosis and treatment for Alzheimer’s disease,” Levey says. “I’ve been doing this my entire career. For the first time, I can feel that success is imminent. The first success will be the ability to diagnose the disease accurately and easily, and have treatments that are effective at slowing down the disease. If we can do that, we can cure the disease.”