Dr. Gabrielle Britton
Flyer attached here
Dr. Gabrille Britton is a neuroscientist currently working for the Centro de Neurociencias y Unidad de Investigación Clínica, Instututo de Investigations Científicas y Services de Alta Tecnología (INDICASAT AIP) in Panama. She is part of the Panama Aging Research Initiative (PARI) in collaboration with several universities, hospitals, and health centers in Panama and the United States researching the diagnosis of chronic illnesses, in particular, Alzheimer’s Disease.
Dr. Britton discussed in her talk what is currently being done to diagnose chronic diseases in Panama. The specific chronic illness she is researching is Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). AD is the fifth leading cause of death for people over 65 years old and disproportionally affects those in low and medium income countries. AD is becoming more and more prevalent and more money is spent on AD than on cancer. AD is a type of dementia that causes problems with memory, thinking, and behavior. There isn’t currently a cure, so symptoms will develop and slowly get worse over time, giving the patient between 7 and 11 years to live following a diagnosis. AD is very difficult to diagnose, resulting to most people being diagnosed too late to save their quality of life. Diagnosis requires a physical evaluation, family history, cognitive status, depression screening, functional assessments, biochemical biomarkers, and imaging biomarkers. Both sets of biomarkers are very difficult for people in low-income countries to afford so they are reserved for the rich.
A goal of Dr. Britton’s that she is currently striving towards is to carry out the first long-term longitudinal study to follow patients and use a blood screening to diagnose them with AD. She is currently determining a set of biomarkers that can be screened for in a primary care facility that is as simple as taking a blood sample. In her recent paper “A blood screening test for Alzheimer’s disease,” she discusses this set of biomarkers and patients with these biomarkers, known as a “locked-down referent sample,” made up of a series of 21 proteins to diagnose patients with AD (O’Bryant et al. 2016). Solidifying this locked-down referent sample will help with early diagnosis of AD, allowing for patients to be seen by their primary care doctor for their allotted 18 minutes and be properly diagnosed in that short period of time. This diagnosis will also prevent patients from having to undergo unnecessary procedures if they do not have AD. Dr. Britton is currently working on proving the effectiveness and accuracy of this blood test via her longitudinal study to determine if it is ready to be implemented in a clinical setting.
References
O’Bryant, S.E., Edwards, M., Johnson, L., Hall, J., Villarreal, A.E., Britton, G.B., Quiceno, M., Cullum, C.M., Graff-Radford, N.R. 2016. A blood screening test for Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring. 3(2016): 83-90.