\nWe have also closely followed the recent major developments at Karolinska\nUniversity Hospital, both in terms of a new clinical operational model, and a\nnewly built additional hospital location with specific focus on highly\nspecialized medical care and clinical research. We have recently opened an\nadditional Memory Clinic with a \u201cfast-track\u201d clinical operational model. Where\nthe full routine assessments are completed within one week, and the patient\nflow can be directed more seamlessly and accurately towards the most suitable\nongoing clinical research studies. The EPAD team is also interacting much more\nclosely with the clinic team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How are you\nable to find suitable subjects for the cohort?<\/strong> Recruitment at our site targets memory clinic\npatients. Due to the highly specialized profile of the Karolinska memory\nclinics, about two thirds of the patients do not have dementia at referral, and\na significant proportion are also relatively young (e.g. below 70 years). <\/p>\n\n\n\n The routine\nmemory clinic assessment protocol also helps. In addition to extensive\ncognitive and clinical assessments, both brain MRI scans and CSF sampling for\nAlzheimer biomarkers are done for all referred patients (unless they have\ncontraindications). While this is unusual for many other European countries,\nit\u2019s not unusual for memory clinics in Sweden, and it definitely gives us an\nadvantage for EPAD since we can be extremely specific about recruitment, and\nensure that we actually include trial-ready EPAD participants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another\nimportant factor is that the EPAD team is part of the weekly diagnostic\nconferences of the clinical team, which increases the accuracy of the\nrecruitment process, and ensures that EPAD updates are continuously shared with\nthe clinical team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Any country teleconferences\/meetings\nyou are organizing and how frequent?<\/strong> We have weekly and monthly site-specific EPAD meetings, where any\narising issues can be highlighted and discussed to make sure they are addressed\nin time. We also have an ongoing regular monthly contact with the new Swedish\nsite in Gothenburg, to bring them onboard the project and help out where\nneeded, given that the set-up in Gothenburg is very similar to the one in\nKarolinska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Any past or\nfuture events\/conference which have been beneficial for recruitment into EPAD?<\/strong> EPAD team members have been participating in several\nlocal and national meetings in Sweden targeting clinicians but also the older\ngeneral public (including patients and their families). A description of EPAD\nhas been included in oral presentations to make sure information is spread\nthrough a broader network of memory clinics that could contribute to\nrecruitment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Any\nactivities in terms of participant engagement?<\/strong> Participant engagement and motivation levels tend to\nbe higher in a memory clinic-based cohort compared with the general population,\nand we see this in our EPAD participants too, they come to us already very\ncommitted to contribute to this research. The EPAD design is in itself\nattractive for our target population, especially the alignment of the LCS with\nthe PoC, which is eagerly awaited. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our Clinical\ntrials Unit team (including the EPAD team) is very experienced in working\nlonger-term with this group of research participants. In recent years we had\nseveral qualitative research projects focusing on factors related to motivation\nand engagement in Alzheimer clinical trials, so we already have routines in\nplace for maintaining the EPAD participants\u2019 motivation and engagement during\nthe face to face visits and phone calls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are of course delighted about this international collaboration between so many research groups across Europe, and between academia and industry. Working closely together is the best way to find innovative solutions to address Alzheimer\u2019s disease and prevent dementia\u201d, said Miia Kivipelto<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n EPAD Update:<\/p>\n\n\n\n We currently have 21 sites across Europe<\/strong> enrolling and more than 1,600 research participants<\/strong> screened. There was a total of 50 new research participants enrolled in the EPAD study in April. We are pleased that Pablo Martinez-Lage\u2019s team in San Sebastian (Spain) and Alasdair Lawrie\u2018s team in Grampian (UK) screened respectively 8 and 7 new research participants. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This month, we get to know the Karolinska Institutet centre behind EPAD. The team of Miia Kivipelto (principal investigator of the EPAD project in Karolinska Institutet) began recruiting in August 2017 and has currently recruited 32 participants in the EPAD Longitudinal Cohort Study (LCS). We caught up with her team and asked them a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3118,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ep-ad.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ep-ad.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ep-ad.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ep-ad.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ep-ad.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ep-ad.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ep-ad.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ep-ad.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ep-ad.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ep-ad.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ep-ad.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/EPAD-partners-logo-stack_0012_Karolinska-Institutet-1.png\"){kind=logo}
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