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KU Med Gets $3 Million To Study The Effect Of Exercise On Alzheimer’s

Alex Smith
/
KCUR

With help from a new grant, University of Kansas Medical Center researchers will look at how Alzheimer's might be prevented without drugs. Pharmaceutical companies haven’t had much success fighting the disease, which is the most common form of dementia.

KU Med Dr. Jeff Burns will have older high risk volunteers in the study exercise 150 minutes a week. Burns will scan volunteers’ brains to see how exercise affects amyloid protein, which is linked to the disease.

Burns says even if exercise can only hold off Alzheimer’s, it could make a big difference.

“If people are destined to get it, say at 75, and we move that back to 80, then we’ll cut the incidents of Alzheimer’s in half,” says Burns.

Thursday, KU Med announced it had received a $3 million grant for the Alzheimer’s project from the National Institutes of Health. 

As a health care reporter, I aim to empower my audience to take steps to improve health care and make informed decisions as consumers and voters. I tell human stories augmented with research and data to explain how our health care system works and sometimes fails us. Email me at alexs@kcur.org.
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