RIDE study: Reducing the Impact of Dementia Early
If you are between 18—85 years old, you either have or have not been diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) from your doctor, and you would like to help us understand your vascular function and health, please express your interest in participating in our study (details below).
Your participation will help us understand if simple vascular function tests can help identify individuals at risk of dementia.
About the project
Nearly 500,000 Australians are living with dementia (~50 million worldwide), making it one of the greatest global challenges for health and social care in the 21st century.
In the absence of a cure, early detection of dementia is the only available strategy to prevent disease progression. Therefore, new methods for the early detection of dementia are urgently needed. Discovering a non-invasive test to specifically detect the function of the blood vessels in the brain is an unmet challenge for implementing targeted, preventative interventions for dementia.
The aim of this project is to validate a test of cerebral vessel function, against current markers of dementia risk, using MCI as a model for early stages of dementia, and test whether vessel dysfunction is brain specific or occurs systemically.
This project is led by Dr Hannah Thomas, who is supported by a team of investigators who have both research and clinical experience in the fields of exercise physiology, neurophysiology, vascular physiology, neuroimaging, and neuropsychology to ensure both scientific rigor and participant safety.
Participate in the study
Recruitment for this study has now begun; male and female participants are welcome.
We are looking for individuals between the ages of 18-85, either with or without a diagnosis on MCI, to participate in 2 testing sessions to understand the relationship between vascular function, brain health and cognition, and if easy tests of vascular function can be used to detect the risk of dementia early.
Benefits of participating
As a research participant you will:
- be provided with feedback on your vascular function, brain health and cognitive function
- receive a $60 gift card for your time.
What participants are required to do
Participation in this project will involve your attendance at 2 testing visits over a 2-week period.
These will include:
- Visit 1 – Questionnaires, cognitive assessments, and brain scan (MRI) (~ 2.5 h)
- medical history questionnaire, sleep quality questionnaire, physical activity questionnaire
- range of cognitive assessments
- imaging scan of the brain
- fitted with a watch that measures your activity which you will be asked to wear for 1 week.
- Visit 2 – Central (heart), peripheral (arm) and cerebral (brain) blood vessel function assessments (~ 2h)
- wear a face mask to measure the gases in the air that you breath in and out
- breath a concentration of gas with higher-than-normal carbon dioxide (9%) (the amount of oxygen will be the same as room/normal air)
- have a blood pressure cuff inflated on your arm and leg
- imaging measurement of blood flow and blood vessel function in the head (brain), neck (blood vessels supplying blood flow to the brain), arm and heart.
