Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that sleep deprivation may be linked to Alzheimer’s disease

The disease is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States and the only cause of death among the top 10 that cannot be prevented, cured or slowed, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

The researchers’ study revealed that levels of amyloid beta, a protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease, increases during hours when people are awake and decreases when they are asleep.

Subjects were monitored while engaged in various activities, including eating, drinking and using a computer, but fluctuations of amyloid-beta levels were only observed in correlation to wakefulness and sleep, according to Randall Bateman, M.D., associate professor of neurology.

Bateman’s laboratory partnered with Washington University’s Sleep Medicine Center to conduct the study.

“It’s still speculation, but there are tantalizing hints that better sleep may be helpful in reducing Alzheimer’s disease risk,” Stephen Duntley, M.D., professor of neurology and director of the center, said in a press release.

The finding, which was published in the medical journal Archives of Neurology, is one of the most recent in a string of studies by the University on the disease.

“We focus on it because there’s simply not very good treatment or diagnoses for Alzheimer’s,” Bateman said. “Alzheimer’s is a fairly neglected disease. It costs this country more than a hundred billion dollars a year, yet we invest less than one billion dollars a year into that.”

Bateman said that an important part of the funding for his research comes from donations made by patients and their families.

“There’s a particularly difficult problem right now with funding at the NIH [National Institute of Health], the government, as well as with the macroeconomic situation of the economy being down, which has severely affected pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs,” he said.

Researchers are now trying to understand which hormones correlate with amyloid beta, though, according to Bateman, more funding is needed to do so.

Bateman and David Holtzman, M.D., professor of neurology, have gained national attention for their research on Alzheimer’s disease. They have appeared in the New York Times and CBS News as well as in other media outlets. Bateman hopes that such recognition for their work will increase funding for future research on Alzheimer’s disease.

In the meantime, Bateman and his colleagues will continue striving to learn more about the disease, the death rate for which has increased by 66 percent from 2000 to 2008, according to the Alzheimer’s Association’s 2011 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures.

“Unless the younger generation recognizes this and supports research in this area, there won’t be enough time to prevent parents or grandparents from this disease,” he said.

The new interdisciplinary program will allow students to focus on a career in research and academia.

“This unique program is aimed to train scientists…to improve the quality of life of people with disabilities and chronic health conditions and to increase their ability to participate in family, work and community life,” wrote Carolyn Baum, director of the occupational therapy program, in a news release.

Students can specialize in neurorehabilitation, performance or community participation. They will be mentored by senior biomedical and clinical scientists.

A program with a similar curriculum can be found at Boston University. Most universities, however, only provide a rehabilitation counseling program through their college of education, college of arts and sciences or rehabilitation therapy (occupational therapy) through their medical colleges.

Baum expects the rehabilitation sciences to have a bright future. The number of medical scientists is expected to grow 40 percent between 2008 and 2018, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Moreover, rehabilitation services director was designated one of CNN’s 100 Best Jobs in America. According to CNN, the median annual salary for an experienced professional is $90,000, and there will be approximately 23 percent job growth between 2008 and 2018.

In its first year, the program can only accept two students. However, in the future, four students will be accepted annually. The application deadline for the fall 2011 program is Jan. 31, 2011.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) increased funding for biomedical research grants through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $10 billion over two fiscal years. The roughly estimated $20 billion per year available for biomedical research projects from the NIH has thus increased by around 25 percent to about $25 billion per year.

This April, the medical school filed a total of 615 grants. By the same time last year, the school had filed only 174 grants.

“This stark increase in the number of grant applications is directly a result of the passage of the ARRA,” said Jennifer Lodge, associate dean for research at the School of Medicine.

According to Lodge, most of the school’s research grants come from the NIH.

“We received about $450 [million] to $470 million total in funding in a fiscal year, and approximately $350 million is granted by the NIH,” Lodge said. “The rest comes from organizations like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation.”

Faculty usually apply for research grants individually or through program projects, for which a team of faculty members apply together. Lodge pointed out that the greater number of the grants applied for are individual based.

The Institute for Clinical and Translational Science and the Midwest Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research are examples of institutions at the University that recently received federal grants.

According to Lodge, the medical school has tallied about $40 million in grant money from the ARRA funding as of last week. The funding is distributed over approximately 140 awarded grants. Since the ARRA was passed, the medical school has sent out anywhere from 650 to 800 grant applications for the ARRA funding.

“The competition is very intense and competitive,” Lodge said. “Regular NIH grants have a payline of about 10 to 12 percent. The payline is the amount of grants awarded. The ARRA funding payline may well be lower than that number.”

Lodge noted that there has been a widely positive response from faculty members in reaction to the ARRA and the resulting increase in funding.

“The faculties see the ARRA and the increased funding as an opportunity to expand research,” Lodge said. “This presents opportunities for new research projects as well as the expansion of existing ones.”

Lodge said she believes that the ARRA and the increased research funding will stimulate the economy because many labs will now have enough money to hire new lab technicians and new employees while still keeping the existing ones.

“In a time where companies are laying off workers, the ARRA is allowing the good scientists to be employed during this economic crisis,” Lodge said. “The ARRA plays a role in creating a more vibrant and alive economy.”

The ARRA was signed into law by President Obama last February. It is an effort to jumpstart the economy in the aftermath of the economic recession.

The ARRA is worth $787 billion altogether and includes federal tax cuts and expansion of unemployment benefits, as well as domestic spending in education, health care and infrastructure, including the energy sector.

$8.9 billion went toward scientific research. The National Science Foundation received $3 billion and the Energy Department received $2 billion.

Under the ARRA, the NIH received $8.2 billion in extramural funding to provide support and advancement of scientific research. The National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a division of the NIH, received $1 billion to support extramural construction, repairs and alterations in support of all NIH-funded research institutions and $300 million for shared instrumentation and other capital equipment to support all NIH activities.

Kuklo, associate professor of orthopedic surgery, submitted a letter of resignation on July 30, effective Sept. 30, according a statement issued by the University.
“Dr. Kuklo has agreed to voluntarily resign from the University, effective September 30, 2009,” the statement said. “Dr. Kuklo will have no clinical, research, or educational duties for the University between now and that date.”

Kuklo has been the subject of federal scrutiny over a study the U.S. Army alleges he falsified while working at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He performed the study, which was about the benefits of a bone-growth drug, before coming to the University in 2006.

Medical school spokesman Don Clayton declined to comment further on Kuklo’s resignation because school officials are conducting an investigation.

The drug, Infuse, is produced by a Minneapolis, Minn., company called Medtronic, which hired Kuklo back in 2006 as a consultant around the time he came to the University.
The New York Times reported that Medtronic suspended Kuklo from his consulting duties last spring after word of the falsified study came out. The journal in which the study appeared retracted the article.

Medtronic reportedly paid Kuklo $800,000 from 2001 to 2009 to attend conferences while he was in the military. Just recently, the company acknowledged also paying Kuklo to train doctors and speak at conferences on the company’s behalf.

The Army prohibits its doctors from accepting money for consulting without permission. Investigators reportedly found no sign that Kuklo had gotten proper permission. The University said Kuklo also failed to disclose his relationship to Medtronic as part of the school’s required conflict-of-interest filings.

The Times also reported that Kuklo’s Medtronic dealings drew the scrutiny of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who wrote a letter to the company asking why Kuklo’s name was missing from a list of its consultants.

Each summer, St. Louis’s Camp Crescent gives a summer camp experience to young patients of sickle-cell anemia.

“The goal of Camp Crescent is to provide a rite of passage for sickle-cell children to enjoy camp and to do it in a fashion that is safe and secure,” Michael DeBaun, a sickle-cell anemia expert and founder and director of Camp Crescent, said. “Our goal is to educate our children—our campers—about their disease so they can be empowered to provide better medical care for themselves.”

The Washington University School of Medicine partly sponsors the five-day overnight camp, held in July at Missouri’s Babler State Park, without charge to its campers.

Sherraine Griffin, a freshman and biochemistry major, attended Camp Crescent at age 11. Griffin said she admires Camp Crescent’s goals of sickle-cell disease education, as well as its value to children patients of the disease.

“It allows campers to forget about their troubles for a moment in time,” Griffin said.

According to Michael DeBaun, who also serves as professor of pediatrics at the medical school, Camp Crescent hires junior counselors with sickle-cell anemia as well. His daughter Morgan, a freshman at the University, has been involved with the camp for eight years.

“The campers have a great spirit about them, and it’s awesome to be able to help out during the summer and help brighten their day with the activities that we do,” she said.

A dual relationship exists in the camp. While Morgan DeBaun’s activities certainly affect the campers, the campers, in turn, also affect her.

“Interacting with the kids helps me get a better perspective on life because of the daily struggles that they encounter with their disease, and how they overcome their obstacles,” she said.

Medical staff members at the camp also belong to the medical school, as faculty or medical students. On average, two medical students comprise the staff, which includes one doctor, six nurses, two nurse practitioners and a social worker. The camp hosts 65 campers, junior counselors and counselors each year.

“It’s an enjoyable experience for all those involved, and it’s an opportunity to provide for others who may be less fortunate.” Michael DeBaun said.

Next summer, Griffin hopes to return to the camp as a counselor, and it is this sort of continuity that Morgan DeBaun finds encouraging to the camp staff and campers.

“It’s really great to see the kids grow from year to year and rise from campers to junior counselors to counselors. It’s like a mini family,” she said.

Michael DeBaun encourages other undergraduates to get involved as well.

“Interested students should let us know by Jan. 1 so they can be interviewed. The selected women and men undergo a formal training process to work with the kids. It’s an involved process to plan for camp,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to do.”