The interaction between Alzheimer´s and cerebrovascular diseases in the different dementia stages

In this project we set out to reveal important elements of the association between Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and cerebrovascular disease (CBVD) (the most common co-pathology of AD) based on multimodal biomarker data that were gathered over many years in multiethnic studies.

The first aim is to implement a statistical model that can simultaneously analyze high-throughput multimodal biomarker data and extract meaningful features from them.

Subsequently we will build a clustering framework that will allow us to identify sources of population heterogeneity in the assessed biomarkers.

The second aim is to investigate the complex association between AD and CBVD, based on already collected multimodal biomarker data (brain imaging, fluid, clinical, environmental) from three international cohorts (ADNI, H70, UK biobank; n>7500).

The project is organized in two parts: statistical model implementation (9 months) and statistical model application to biomarker data (11 months).

This project is a platform to answer important questions about the overlapping pathologies of AD and CBVD, but also to develop models that can benefit from the multi-source disease big data that recently became available to the research community.

The results of the planned research may have implications in clinical routine (dementia assessment and accurate classification), but also in the core research for effective treatments in dementia (disease heterogeneity assessment for personalized medicine approaches).