Daily Beast: RU-N Research Collaboration with RBHS Explores Link Between Alzheimer's and COVID-19

A collaboration between Rutgers-Newark neuroscience researcher Mark Gluck and Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS) researcher Patricia Fitzgerald-Bocarsly, who studies immune systems and is RBHS provost, was featured in the Daily Beast as a potentially breakthrough study. Read the full story here.

“Gluck spearheads the ongoing COVID-Alzheimer’s study, alongside Patricia Fitzgerald-Bocarsly, an immune system researcher and Provost of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Science-Newark, and Maria Laura Gennaro, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Rutgers. By examining the questions surrounding COVID—like why age is a risk factor and why some develop long-haul symptoms—the team hopes to “gain insights into Alzheimer’s disease that we would never have had otherwise,” said Gluck.
...[The] project stands out for incorporating another critical overlapping factor: the people at high risk of developing both severe COVID and Alzheimer’s. Rutgers University researchers are currently enrolling older Black adults in an observational study examining the consequences of COVID and how these relate to risk for Alzheimer’s. The neurodegenerative disease disproportionately affects Black Americans, with the CDC anticipating case counts increasing over the next 40 years. COVID is also deadlier for Black Americans, a reality stemming from long-standing public health inequities.
....Supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health awarded in April 2021, the Rutgers study is currently enrolling Black adults over 60 in the Newark area. The goal is to build a cohort of 200 to 300 participants, half of whom have had varying degrees of COVID and half who have not. They will be asked about their sleep, fitness, cognitive status, and overall health while participating in genotyping and brain scans.”