Ricerc@Sapienza

The Office of the Surgeon General recently produced its first Report on the consequences of alcohol and drug abuse on health, making several very laudable policy recommendations. The Report also emphasizes the importance of adequate funding for biomedical research, which is good news for both researchers and patients. However, the Report is marred by a biased viewpoint on the psychology and neurobiology of drug addiction.

Cognitive function is an important end point of treatments in dementia clinical trials. Measuring cognitive function by standardized tests, however, is biased toward highly constrained environments (such as hospitals) in selected samples. Patient-powered real-world evidence using information and communication technology devices, including environmental and wearable sensors, may help to overcome these limitations.

Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRDs) are a global crisis facing the aging population and society as a whole. With the numbers of people with ADRDs predicted to rise dramatically across the world, the scientific community can no longer neglect the need for research focusing on ADRDs among underrepresented ethnoracial diverse groups. The Alzheimer's Association International Society to Advance Alzheimer's Research and Treatment (ISTAART; alz.org/ISTAART) comprises a number of professional interest areas (PIAs), each focusing on a major scientific area associated with ADRDs.

Advanced neuroimaging has increased understanding of the pathogenesis and spread of disease, and offered new therapeutic targets. MRI and positron emission tomography have shown that neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's disease (AD), Lewy body dementia (LBD), Parkinson's disease (PD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and multiple sclerosis (MS) are associated with changes in brain networks. However, the underlying neurophysiological pathways driving pathological processes are poorly defined.

A disruption to circadian rhythmicity and the sleep/wake cycle constitutes a major feature of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The maintenance of circadian rhythmicity is regulated by endogenous clock genes and a number of external Zeitgebers, including light. This study investigated the light induced changes in the expression of clock genes in a triple transgenic model of AD (3×Tg-AD) and their wild type littermates (Non-Tg).

In rats trained to self-administer methamphetamine, extinction responding in the presence of drug-associated contextual and discrete cues progressively increases after withdrawal (incubation of methamphetamine craving). The conditioning factors underlying this incubation are unknown. Here, we studied incubation of methamphetamine craving under different experimental conditions to identify factors contributing to this incubation. We also determined whether the rats' response to methamphetamine priming incubates after withdrawal.

We recently introduced an animal model of incubation of methamphetamine craving after choice-based voluntary abstinence in male rats. Here we studied the generality of this phenomenon to (1) female rats, and (2) male and female rats with a history of heroin self-administration. We first trained rats to self-administer palatable food pellets for 6 days (6?h per day) for either methamphetamine (0.1?mg/kg/infusion) or heroin (0.1?mg/kg/infusion) for 12 days (6?h/day). We then assessed relapse to drug seeking under extinction conditions after 1 and 21 abstinence days.

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) causes elevated outlays for the National Health Systems due to high institutionalization rate and patients' reduced quality of life and high mortality. Furthermore, DLB is often misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's disease. These data motivate harmonized multicenter longitudinal cohort studies to improve clinical management and therapy monitoring.