The impact of Alzheimer's disease and depression on driving

 

News from the University of Washington's official website on March 18

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received three grants totaling more than US$10 million to study the factors that lead to the decline in driving skills of the elderly and determine how to identify driving skills People who have already begun to decline or are on the verge of decline. The ultimate goal is to understand who is at risk so that doctors can intervene to help them maintain their skills or safely adapt to new restrictions.

"Driving is an integral part of Americans' daily lives," said Ganesh Babulal, assistant professor of neurology. Babulal is the lead investigator of two grants and the co-lead investigator of the third grant. "In the next 30 years, the aging population will grow substantially, and driving-not self-driving cars or carpooling, but self-driving-will continue to be the main mode of transportation."

Two of these grants-one from the BrightFocus Foundation and the other from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-support research to determine whether driving changes can identify people with mild and very mild cognitive impairment, or even It is possible to identify people who are in the pre-symptomatic stage of Alzheimer's disease.

Ganesh Babulal, Assistant Professor of Neurology

One in ten people over 65 suffer from Alzheimer's disease. The disease progresses slowly, starting with the accumulation of protein plaques in the brain 20 years or more before the onset of cognitive symptoms.

"Alzheimer's disease affects more than just thinking and memory," said Catherine Roe, associate professor of neurology and co-principal investigator funded by NIH. "It affects your reaction time, vision, strength and gait, mood. All these factors are related to driving, so even before the onset of cognitive symptoms, it may have some impact on driving. This is not unreasonable. ."

In 2015, Roe and Babulal began to study how Alzheimer's disease affects driving in real-world conditions. They designed the Driving Real-World In-Vehicle Evaluation System (DRIVES) chip to monitor how people drive their cars for a long time and the driving patterns nearby. The chip is inserted into a port under the dashboard, and auto mechanics use it to evaluate the car’s computer system. The chip sends a data pulse every 30 seconds, marking the time and the location of the car. When the driver brakes suddenly, accelerates suddenly, or the vehicle hits something, the data recorded by the chip will share this information with researchers.

DRIVES chip

Roe and Babulal have been following some drivers for 5 years. They found that the driving habits of people with Alzheimer's disease deteriorate over time. Now, they want to know whether the reverse is true: Can driving data be used to help identify patients with Alzheimer's disease? Researchers plan to combine driving data with the measured values ​​of molecular signs of Alzheimer’s disease, as well as factors such as age and gender to build a model to identify early Alzheimer’s patients (with or without cognitive symptoms) based on driving habits.

Roe said: "At present, early Alzheimer's disease can be identified by cerebrospinal fluid or brain scans, but most people still can only be diagnosed after showing obvious symptoms of cognitive decline. If we can use driving behavior to help Finding out who may have underlying Alzheimer’s disease will be an economical and natural way to identify people with mild symptoms, or even those with pre-symptoms.”

"Depression and Alzheimer's disease affect memory and thinking in similar ways," Babulal said. "Many Alzheimer's disease studies screen people with depression because it makes the data noisy. We want to embrace This noise. We are very carefully defining what is depression and what is cognitive problem, so that we can try to unravel the effects of depression and Alzheimer’s disease on driving. I suspect that both depression and Alzheimer’s affect driving. I suspect that people who suffer from both depression and Alzheimer’s disease are at the highest risk of deteriorating driving skills, and we really need to pay attention to them from the perspective of driver safety. "

Babulal and Roe are looking for participants 65 years or older to participate in their driving research. Participants need to be able to come to the medical school to receive the DRIVES chip, and undergo clinical evaluation and other molecular signs of Alzheimer's. People outside the St. Louis area can participate remotely, but they need to be able to come in for regular assessments.