University Times

In addition to being an outpatient facility for memory assessments, Pitt’s Alzheimer Disease Research Center (ADRC) hosts a number of other Alzheimer’s disease-related programs and clinical trials. Among the center’s outreach programs is the Alzheimer Outreach Center, a community satellite that aims to increase the awareness of Alzheimer’s disease in the African-American community, said MaryAnn Oakley, ADRC education and information coordinator.

“That’s part of what we do here, educating the community and educating physicians,” Oakley said. “We’re not here to take their patient away from them. If a patient comes here, they still go back to their PCP, and we very much want to communicate back and forth to their PCP.”

ADRC also educates health care professionals by allowing them to observe the diagnostic evaluations, Oakley said. Professionals such as nurses, social workers, physician assistants, health care administrators, physical therapists, occupational therapists, medical students, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are eligible. The goal is to improve clinical, research and advisory skills through an increased understanding of a multidisciplinary approach to patient care.

In another educational effort, individuals in St. Margaret’s geriatric fellowship program spend a week at ADRC, learning about Alzheimer’s in a hands-on environment.

Recently, ADRC collaborated with the Warhol Museum on two unusual programs. The collaboration was inspired by the artwork of Brazilian artist Jose Rufino, whose work focuses on loss, specifically loss affecting victims of political repression in Brazil.

“Rufino expanded this idea in a different way, looking at loss of a person’s memory, or the loss of a person with AD,” Oakley explained. The result was an exhibit at the Warhol created by Rufino from documents and drawings by ADRC patients.

In another program, museum curators show ADRC patients different works and discuss them. Afterwards, patients go into the museum’s studio and create a piece of art themselves.

Clinical trials are a major focus of ADRC, matching patients and their family members with additional AD-related research studies.

“The center itself is a part of a larger research study. Once people are enrolled here as a participant, we can then look at them for additional studies,” Oakley said. “We sometimes have drug trials, imaging studies, and we have different kinds of observational or caregiver studies. We have a population of control participants, too.”

Some control subjects have been with ADRC for more than 20 years, she said.

Descriptions and eligibility requirements of ongoing studies and trials are available on the ADRC web site, www.adrc.pitt.edu.

The site also contains information on Alzheimer’s disease and numerous outside resources, such as links to the Alzheimer’s Disease Education and Referral Center, the Alzheimer’s Association, the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center, the Family Caregiver Alliance, the National Institute on Aging and Pitt’s Institute on Aging.

For more information about ADRC, call 412/692-2700 or email Oakley at oakleym@upmc.edu.

—Peter Hart