Alzheimer's disease conferences become digital

The COVID-19 pandemic has also fully affected Alzheimer's disease conferences, which each year bring together thousands of researchers from around the world who are experts in this field.

One of the first to adapt to the new situation is the Advances in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Therapies AAT-AD / PD ™ Focus Meeting 2020, which was to be held in Vienna from April 2nd to 5th, and was finally held entirely on-line. In the meeting participated the responsible for the two research groups at the Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Center (BBRC), Dr. José Luis Molinuevo and Dr. Juan Domingo Gispert.

Dr. Molinuevo, Director of the Alzheimer Prevention Program and head of the BBRC Clinical Research, Biomarkers and Risk Factors group, participated as a guest speaker giving a conference on biomarkers of the preclinical phase of Alzheimer's disease, entitled 'Early changes in AD biomarkers shown an interplay between tau metabolism, inflammation, synaptic damage and neurodegeneration '.

For his part, Dr. Gispert, head of the BBRC Neuroimaging group, participated in a symposium with an oral presentation on the relationship between levels of amyloid protein in the brain and biomarkers of cerebrospinal fluid, entitled 'Neurotoolkit CSF biomarkers track the progression of Alzheimer's disease at very early stages and show that inflammatory markers modulate cerebral amyloid accumulation '.

The virtual event also presented the results of a research by the BBRC in collaboration with the VU Medical Center Amsterdam on the effect of the APOE-E4 genotype on the prevalence and number of microbleeds in the brain in older people without cognitive disorders.

Upcoming conferences

As in the case of the AD / PD, the scientific congresses and events that were going to be held these days or were scheduled for the next few weeks are being adapted to take place virtually, or have been directly canceled or postponed. This is the case, for example, of the Human Brain Mapping conference (it will be virtual), the XII Biennial Conference Barcelona-Pittsburg (postponed), or the AAIC Satellite Symposium in Athens (postponed), in which researchers from the BBRC were also going to participate.

The last congress to announce that it will be held in a virtual way has been one of the most outstanding, the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, which was scheduled for the end of July in Amsterdam.

In the Alzforum calendar you can check the complete list of events planned for the coming months and their current status.