Institute of Neuroimmunology
Topic
Non-pharmacological interventions in animal models for Alzheimer’s disease and other tauopathies.
PhD. program
Molecular biology
Year of admission
2024
Name of the supervisor
MVDr. Mgr. Tomáš Smolek, PhD.
Contact:
Receiving school
Faculty of Natural Sciences Comenius University in Bratislava
Annotation
Current population is growing and the rising number of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) cases is occurring. While genetics contribute to less than 5% of cases, changeable lifestyle factors influence disease development. Research suggests that up to 40% of dementia risk can be attributed to modifiable factors like physical inactivity, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, social isolation, low education, obesity, hypertension, diabetes, depression, and hearing impairment. Given the heterogeneous nature of AD, targeting a single pathology may not be sufficient to halt or significantly impact disease progression, what we can see from anti- amyloid antibody treatment on cognition measures. From human studies we also know that non-pharmacological, lifestyle-based multidomain interventions are proving beneficial for patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) but we do know exact mechanism. Therefore, new multimodal nonpharmacological therapy approaches (enriched environment, psychical activity, diet) on animal tau models targeting several of these modifiable risk factors and disease mechanisms simultaneously, progress of tau pathology are urgently required and this is main focus of this project.