Maria Glymour - Univ. of California, San Francisco

Lifecourse perspectives on dementia epidemiology: are we studying Alzheimer's disease or child development?

    Date:  03/08/2018 (Thu)

    Time:  3:30pm- 5:00pm

    Location:  Seminar will be held on-site: Gross Hall 270

    Organizer:  Seth Sanders


Meeting Schedule: Login or email the organizer to schedule a meeting.

    All meetings will be held in the same location as the seminar unless otherwise noted.

   8:00am - Breakfast at Washington Duke; Seth Sanders, Joe Hotz & Don Taylor

    9:30am - Marcos Rangel

   10:00am - Laura Bellows/Romina Tome

   10:30am - Patricia Homan

   11:00am - Giovanna Merli

   11:30am - Emma Zang

   12:00pm - Dan Belsky (LUNCH)

    1:30pm - Grace Noppert

    2:30pm - Angie O'Rand

    3:00pm - Seminar Prep

    3:30pm - Seminar Presentation (3:30pm to 5:00pm)

    6:00pm - Dinner with Seth Sanders, Joe Hotz


    Additional Comments:  ABSTRACT: Dementia poses a tremendous public health burden, but the major causes of dementia remain controversial. Identifying modifiable causes of dementia is challenging because of ambiguity in the outcome definition, the long and insidious onset of disease, and substantial confounding. I argue that many of the risk factors identified in observational epidemiology are correlates of childhood development, rather than causes of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, which emerge in old age. If so, recent trends in dementia incidence should be interpreted in light of improved childhood conditions in the first half of the 20th century. To advance our understanding of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders, we will need novel study designs that circumvent the measurement and confounding biases intrinsic to research on dementia.