ISTAART Relay Podcast – Lewy Body Dementias PIA

Voice Over:

Hello, and thank you for listening to the fifth season of the ISTAART PIA Relay Podcast, brought to you by Dementia Researcher.

ISTAART is a professional society and part of the Alzheimer's Association representing scientists, physicians, and other dementia professionals active in researching and understanding the causes and treatments of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.

In this six-part series, we have members of ISTAART Professional Interest Areas taking turns at interviewing their colleagues, and being interviewed themselves, with the interviewee going on to be the next episode's interviewer. We're sure you've listened before, so you know what to expect.

We'll be releasing one of these podcasts each day in the buildup to the Alzheimer's Association International Conference, which this year takes place in Philadelphia. Through the series, we hope you'll learn more about some of the amazing research happening in different fields of discovery, and about the great work taking place in the ISTAART PIAs. Thank you for listening.

Dr Jessica Caldwell:

I'm Jessica Caldwell. I'm a neuropsychologist and director of the Women's Alzheimer's Movement Prevention and Research Centre at Cleveland Clinic. I work on the sex and gender Professional Interest Area, or PIA, as the steering member of our executive committee.

Today I'm delighted to be talking with Ece Bayram. Hi Ece. Can I start by asking you to introduce yourself and tell us which PIA you are involved in?

Dr Ece Bayram:

Hi everyone. I'm Ece. I am the incoming communications chair for the Lewy body dementias PIA. And I just got promoted to my new job actually too, and I am an assistant professor as of July. I moved to Denver from San Diego. I'm currently at University of Colorado, Denver right now. I'm an MD PhD and I work as a researcher right now. I focus on sex, gender, ethnicity, and race in Lewy body dementias and other neurodegenerative Parkinsonian disorders.

Dr Jessica Caldwell:

Congratulations on that promotion and new job. That's so exciting.

Dr Ece Bayram:

Thank you. I feel like I'm up for epic failure, but we shall see.

Dr Jessica Caldwell:

Well, I think you've got the belief of the PIAs behind you, so congratulations.

I wonder if to kick us off a bit, would you tell us about some of your current research? Maybe a project that's really exciting to you right now?

Dr Ece Bayram:

Yeah, I have two main projects that I'm actually involved with right now. One is sex differences in genetics for Lewy body dementia. So, I'm looking into the genetic risk factors that are specific to females and males that can cause Lewy body dementia.

I'm also working on environmental and occupational risk factors for Lewy body dementia: something, interestingly, that has not been investigated so much before. And I'm looking into sex differences for that as well, since we see such a strong sex difference in Lewy body dementia, very different compared to what we see in Alzheimer's disease. So, I'm pretty interested in that.

I will comment very quick on the stats. I actually picked this topic up from Dr. Caldwell herself and Dr. Sarah Banks, who used to be my mentors when I was in Vegas. And I just transitioned it to Lewy body dementias, since that was my interest area. And here we are, working on sex and gender these days now too.

Dr Jessica Caldwell:

I'm so happy to hear that you've continued it, and really made this your own. I wonder, for folks who are less experienced with the sex differences piece, could you talk a little bit more about what the reason for going into sex differences in Lewy body disease was, and maybe even Parkinson's as it relates to Lewy body disease?

Dr Ece Bayram:

So, I can start off by a little bit of the terminology to make it easier to understand for people, too. So, when we say, "Lewy body disease," it basically means any disease where you have Lewy body pathology underneath, if you cut open someone's brain.

And Parkinson's disease is probably the most prevalent of the Lewy body diseases. But we also have the dementia side of things. So, if Parkinson's disease eventually goes ahead and evolves into dementia, Parkinson's disease dementia, then we call it under the umbrella of Lewy body dementia.

Also, we can see people that develop dementia earlier without Parkinson's disease. And we call those people dementia with Lewy bodies, and that falls under that Lewy body dementia umbrella as well.

For both of these dementia Lewy bodies, Parkinson's disease dementia, not a lot of research had been done before, during my time when I was younger. But Parkinson's disease had been investigated a lot. And there were consistent sex differences that were being found where females and males, they can develop the disease differently. They can have different clinical profiles.

Females are more likely to have the tremor-dominant phenotype, for instance. Males are more likely to have the rigidity gaits-dominant profile. And disease may progress a bit faster for males; females may not progress as fast as males.

But also, treatment effects can differ for females and males, which becomes very important if you're dealing with these diseases in a clinical setting. You prescribe a drug to someone, you want to know how they're going to react to it, and you want to be able to tell them, "Hey, this is what I expect when I give you this medication." So, we see a lot of side effects showing up earlier for females, whereas males may not show those side effects as much as females.

We also, on top of that sex effect, we see a little social gender effect in there too, that impacts the daily lives of people living with Parkinson's disease, and also how healthcare professionals treat these people with Parkinson's disease. These were well-known in the Parkinson's realm, I can say. Still a long way to go for sure, but consistently in studies it has been reported. Yes, there are sex differences. Yes, there are gender differences.

Dementia, on the other hand, has not been investigated as much. So, I figured it would be pretty interesting to look into the dementia aspect, because cognitive problems are usually the most bothersome things for people with Parkinson's disease.

And dementia with Lewy bodies or Parkinson's disease dementia, they're both haunted by under-diagnosis, misdiagnosis. People get diagnosed with Alzheimer's instead and go down that path of treatments, management approaches, even though they have something else happening for them. So, I wanted to turn the spotlight to this group of people.

And I was, I guess, fortunate enough to see the significant differences happening there too, where I was able to keep working on it, digging it more. So, I was excited to bring light to those, and we did see an increase in the number of studies looking into sex differences in dementia, Lewy bodies, and also Parkinson's disease dementia right now too.

Those studies kept showing like, "Hey, there are structural brain imaging differences, functional brain imaging differences. The clinical profile seems to differ. The pathology correlation with the clinic seems to differ." And as we're moving along, advancing the field into treatment options too, we're probably going to see some differences in treatment options there too.

And people need to know; you want to be able to tell the healthcare providers what to expect. You want to be able to tell the people living with these diseases what to expect. So, I feel like research is slowly growing, and I'm excited to be a part of that growing literature as well, where we're seeing differences. We're actually seeing people get more and more interested in these topics, and they're investing in these things more.

Women are notoriously underrepresented in Lewy body disease realm; versus they may be represented a bit more in the Alzheimer's disease realm. So, we're getting the voices heard a bit more through these efforts too. So, it's exciting. I'm a nerd when it comes to my research topic, so I'm excited about it.

I get to give talks to the community, and I talk to a couple support groups. And it's always inspiring to hear people say, "Hey, that is indeed my experience." Or, "I had never heard that before, and now I'm intrigued," and they want to know more. They're interested, and they finally feel like they're being heard. And at the end of the day, I think that's what we're all aiming for.

We want people to feel that they're heard that their needs are getting addressed. So, I feel like we're moving it in the right direction. Still a lot more to do. Alzheimer's is way more advanced in front of the Lewy body dementia realm, but we're trying to catch up. We're trying to get there. We're making some moves.

Dr Jessica Caldwell:

It sounds like you're really contributing both to the research literature, as well as to public understanding. Which, like you're saying, if we don't really take that research and bring it to the folks who need to hear what you're finding, it doesn't have as much impact if it just remains in the realm of academia or science. So, I really want to thank you for doing that for those community members.

And then I don't think you should feel bad that Lewy body disease is behind Alzheimer's disease. I think really, it's amazing to see this topic of sex and gender differences being looked at in a variety of diseases, where maybe that had kind of been overlooked in the past.

I'm curious if there's anything that's being looked at right now like it is in the Alzheimer's field with hormones in Lewy body disease. Is there anything going on in that area?

Dr Ece Bayram:

So, in Parkinson's, yes. There have been some studies, very limited, but they're growing. There's actually a study I'm aware of in Europe where it's being led by a person living with Parkinson's disease, as well as other collaborators she works with who work on Parkinson's disease. And they developed an app to collect people's menstruation cycle data, and to see how that relates to their Parkinson's symptoms, how they respond to treatments.

There isn't much in Lewy body dementia, unfortunately. In that environmental occupational survey I did, we actually included the reproductive health risk factors in there too, to collect some sort of data in terms of their past experience with menstruation, menopause, et cetera, to see if there may be a link there.

Because it's very easy to think, "Okay, if there's sex differences happening, there must be something with the biology of those things. Hormones probably come into play. Females, males have such different hormone profiles." And then no one's doing it.

So, you're like, "Okay, well, let's look into that." But then at the back of your mind, you're always like, "If no one's doing it, there may be a reason why it hasn't been done. There may be a reason why it can't be done, why people didn't do it," et cetera.

For instance, a lot of the times in not Parkinson's but Lewy body dementia research, we see that it's really hard to recruit people. Because it's a very burdensome disease, and the tests we require them to go through in research may be a lot for them to go through.

We don't really design these studies thinking what their needs, what their abilities are. We just design it based on the data we want at times, and that's pretty negligible from our end. We should be a bit more mindful for our community. But in those cases, too, it's really hard to get these people into these studies.

A lot of studies are being done in big resource centres, where there's a lot of resources. And a lot of people don't have access to these resource centres. A lot of people don't hear about the resource studies happening at all.

Something we see just in general with all diseases, people want to be in research. People want to know more about their disease. People want to contribute so others may not have to go through their issues. But if you don't let them know about what research is happening, they're not going to be able to show up, participate in research.

And if you say, "Hey, we'll recruit you, but you got to have a care partner," it's a lot to ask from them too. They have to make sure someone can be there during the research visit at all times. These visits are long.

It's tough on the care partner too. It's an additional thing they have to do on top of what they're already giving, to make sure their person living with these diseases are comfortable. So, it's a lot. It can be very hard to collect this type of in-person data.

I did the online survey. And even then, it wasn't easy to make people participate in the online components. Because it does get lonesome too to do the online. You don't really feel like you're contributing. You're like, "Okay, what is this data going to do? I don't understand. It feels a bit bizarre, awkward." So, I get that part too.

So totally going off the question and the topic, but I feel like we have to diversify the efforts. We can't just be sticking to the good old traditional ways that "Yeah, we know they work, great. In-person visits, the best. Long visits, test them for hours. Awesome. Collect all the data you want, love it, analyse it, perfect. No data missing."

But it's not feasible, especially for this group of people, especially for this community, it's just not feasible. There's a lot of consortium studies happening, and they recruit a lot of people over time. But it's just a very small snippet of the whole community. It's not very representative of the whole community living with these diseases. We're getting such a small itsy-bitsy tiny part of their story.

So, I feel like just diversifying our approach, our methods, making sure we're catering to their needs even during research to include them in our studies. That way, we can address these topics that haven't been addressed like hormones. And hopefully, eventually, these studies will increase. And I know a lot of people are interested in these topics, excited, but to remain mindful.

Dr Jessica Caldwell:

Well, I have a couple of follow-ups there. I know you're just starting out a new position as an assistant professor. It sounds like you really have done a lot of thought and put a lot of thought into how to develop these studies for the community and for the actual patients.

What do you think are your top one or two priorities for building your new research lab, and getting that understanding into your research?

Dr Ece Bayram:

I think whenever I will hopefully implement a new research study in the future, my first thing is to design it with the people. I'm very excited to be involved with associations that are involved with the Lewy body dementia community, where I can actually go to them, design it with them, and get the community's needs addressed that way.

Because I feel like we're always in our bubble, designing things on our own, hustling to get research funded. But we're not really remembering, "Hey, is this feasible? It sounds great on paper and maybe it will get funded. Awesome."

But then when it comes to actually implementing it, it just doesn't work out. It's really hard. It's really hard to recruit people. So, designing it from the get-go with the community, to make sure it is indeed something feasible from their end, I think that's a very important thing for me. And also, just informing people throughout the process.

A lot of the times, research studies are radio silence if you participate. You show up to the visit; sure, everyone's available when they're trying to schedule you. When you show up at the visit, they'll answer any question you have. They'll try to help you the best they can, but then you're done with the visit. Maybe you don't even have a follow-up visit. Radio silence.

You don't hear from them. You ask them about your results. A lot of times we can't share the results in research studies, and that's just the way research is. But then they get left alone. They don't even feel like they have contributed. They don't know what the outcome is in this research that they're doing.

So, I feel like it's really important to keep informing people at every stage. Even if you don't have any findings, you can keep informing people that, "Hey, this is the number of participants we had in the study so far. This is what we've been doing in the study so far. Your data is not going to waste. What you shared with us is not for nothing. We're still working on it. There's still things we're hoping out will happen in the future."

So, I feel like designing it with the people, informing them throughout the process, and once you're done, giving that information back to the people and disseminating it in the community, beyond the scientific publications we're doing.

Because I feel like sometimes, we're forgetting why we do what we do, because it's a living for us. We do what we do to survive. We got to make a living out of it. But also, we're in these fields because we care about the people, and we want to make people's lives better.

And if we're not going back to them directly and saying, "Hey, this is what I did. This is what I found. You contributed to this. Here you go," and make them feel better. They want to know, even if you don't have any significant finding, even if you found that, "Hey, I looked into if hormones are different and I didn't find any differences." Let them know. They contributed to it. They have a right to know. They should be the first people to know it sometimes.

So, I feel like it's really important to just continuously keep them engaged, and that's what I'm hoping to do. And especially in these diseases where it's very hard to recruit people, I think it's important to build that community. Because what we forget at times is people feel like family when they've shared so much with you.

I mean, they come to a research visit, and you ask them all those intimate details. And they share things with you that they may not have shared with anyone in their family even. They may get extra-vulnerable with you. They may get extra comfort with you, from you. So, you may actually provide some benefits to them beyond what you're doing for your research.

So, I think it's important to remember that person component, what we're doing, why we're doing it. It's for them. So, keep them involved at all times. Don't be like, "Oh, they're not going to get it." They'll get it if you explain it in the way that they're going to get it.

We change our lingo to make sure we can do the rating scales or the assessments. We make sure we can communicate the way people would need communication. So, I think we can communicate the findings pretty easily too, if we put in maybe a little extra effort.

I know sometimes we get lost in our terminology. I do that too, and I'm like, "Oh, darn it. I wasn't born with this terminology. I learned it over time, so I shouldn't expect someone else to just pick it up the way I say it." You can simplify things, make it lay personal language, the language you speak at home. It's not that tricky to do.

Dr Jessica Caldwell:

Well, I'm so glad to hear that you're so dedicated to not just planning your studies with the community and making everything relevant, but really that iterative cycle where you bring the results back. You're giving back, but at the same time, that's where you need the feedback for how you did and how you're going to do the next study. What should come next? And you're talking to someone who has this at heart.

We can explain. We can do all explanation types. We can talk to academics, but we also can talk to people who don't have that background. It's part of our responsibility. And the way that you describe things sounds really refreshing and admirable.

I know I've asked you a lot about the sex differences pieces. But I wonder, could you say a little bit more about the occupational exposure? Tell us a little bit about what that means, and what are the hot topics on that side of things that you're expecting to see coming up in the next year or so in the literature?

Dr Ece Bayram:

It's tough to make predictions, because there just isn't much in Lewy body dementia. We know that some pesticides have been associated with Parkinson's, and they have pretty strong associations. We actually saw them turn into some public campaigns to ban those agents. They are banned in Europe in some countries. They're trying to ban those in US right now, for instance.

So those kind of research findings can feed into actual steps taken to make sure people in the future will not experience the same risk levels. For Lewy body dementia, we're not really sure. We don't really know. There haven’t been any specific studies done to look into occupational exposures. So, the factors you may get bombarded by at work is what I mean by the occupational exposures.

If you're working at a farm, you may be dealing with pesticides. That's going to be your risk factor. If you're working at a metal company, those specific metals may be your risk factor. But we're not sure how they connect to Lewy body dementia. And there may be something there, especially since we're seeing such a strong sex difference with males being impacted by this dementia more. And even when they experience this dementia, they're just impacted by the symptoms more.

It may have to do with the stereotyped occupations that we attach to the men that they're involved with a bit more. And that may be a risk factor that's causing this sex and gender difference we see. We're not sure. It may be why; not sure. I wish I could give a better answer. But this is why we need more people in this real [inaudible 00:23:26] to that, so more people can work on this. More people can understand why.

Something I always found interesting in terms of the sex differences in Lewy body dementia is we see it so strongly in the Western populations. We don't see it as strong in studies coming from the Asian communities. And I feel like it's such an interesting thing.

I always felt like, "Why can't a lot of people from Asia and the Western side just come together, do a global study, a joint study, and look into this?" And it hasn't been done before. Hopefully it will be done eventually. I don't know the reasons why. I don't think I want to know the reasons why.

But as the newer generation, I feel like we're going to be better at collaborating. And I hope we'll get to do those things and understand why we're seeing such geographical differences. Because I don't think it's ethnicity race related. I don't think it's that social ethnic race component coming into it. I think it has to do with whatever is in that culture, maybe.

Some occupations may not be typical in certain countries. They may be more typical for men in the Western population. Who knows? Maybe that's what's driving it. Certain things may not be available in different countries. Maybe that's what's driving it.

So, I feel like coming together for the global efforts is really going to help us understand why we're seeing such differences.

Dr Jessica Caldwell:

I'm really happy to hear that, and glad that you're speaking to the potential global or cultural effect. As you were talking about those kind of stereotypical male-dominated jobs in some areas of the US, it also struck me that a lot of those are blue-collar jobs where you get exposures. And so, I wonder: what is the role of the class culture?

And then also in a lot of Alzheimer's disease research, we're really talking about; and you are as well with the sex plus gender plus exposure to occupational hazards kind of piece. We're talking about intersectionality, right?

Dr Ece Bayram:

Mm-hmm.

Dr Jessica Caldwell:

So, it's not just one piece. Has there been in Lewy body disease a big push to look at things like ancestry or race or ethnicity? Or is the emphasis more on culture than it is maybe in the Alzheimer's disease literature right now?

Dr Ece Bayram:

There's not much in terms of culture or race or ethnicity in Lewy body dementia. We have the usual suspects: highly educated whites, non-Hispanic communities. They may not have as many comorbidities. They may not be at as a high risk for Lewy body dementia compared to Hispanic, Black communities that have more exposure during life to certain deteriorating factors, certain risk factors and comorbidities. They have more comorbidities, and they can make them experience dementia worse.

We see that a little bit in Lewy body dementia too. But I wouldn't say it's such a strong difference that we're seeing right now, because there isn't much done. We're not sure about it.

We know that in autopsy studies where pathology data is available, non-Hispanic white communities, they don't have as much co-pathologies as the other communities. But I mean, that's just the usual finding I think we keep finding.

Also, we got to keep in mind when we're talking about race, ethnicity and brain donation, et cetera, a lot of those studies are pretty biassed for recruitments. And it's not a very good representation of the community. I'm not even saying for the global, not even for the US or Europe.

It takes a certain type of people to be able to access brain donation. It takes a certain type of people to say, "Yes" to brain donation, your family to approve brain donation after you pass. So, I wouldn't say the findings we have right now, which are limited, are very reliable. I don't think we can actually base anything strong off of those.

Dr Jessica Caldwell:

Thank you. I think you're describing what a lot of fields, when it comes to neurodegeneration, are facing right now: is just realities of the way that some studies have been conducted historically.

There are barriers for a lot of people to be a participant in those kinds of studies, which then limits what we know about the broader ... Like you're saying, not just global health in that disorder or disease, but also even locally or in smaller regions, what it means for everyone, and not just the folks who have access.

So, I want to also follow up with you. Would you tell me a little bit, are you presenting anything at AAIC? Will you be at AAIC this year?

Dr Ece Bayram:

I am. I have a presentation for the Lewy Body Dementia PIA Day. I'm actually talking about the research priorities of people and caregivers in the Lewy body dementia community. So, I'm pretty excited about that. We'll bring the Lewy body dementia community aspects into things. Because we do the research we like, but what do people want us to work on?

They are the ones that are the most important components in our research. So, what do they want to hear? What do they want to learn about? So, I'm going to talk about that.

Then I also have a couple posters that I'll be presenting. I'm going to shamelessly tour the posters and check out what the Lewy body dementia peeps at the AAIC have been up to, and I'm excited about that. Our PIA is actually going to go around. We're hoping to give some exposure to all the posters we see that are on Lewy body dementia. We'll share them on social media if the presenter's okay with it.

And yeah, I'll be at AAIC. I'll be walking around. Since I'm the incoming communications chair, I'm actually going to bring a little microphone with me too. So, if you're interested in Lewy body dementia, or if you're interested in just chatting with me, I may show up and get in your face with a little phone microphone. So be prepared.

And even if you don't have any interest in Lewy body dementia or interviewing with me, you can always come and say, "Hi." Ask me about struggles you want to talk about or ask me about Star Wars. I'm always happy to talk about Star Wars too.

Dr Jessica Caldwell:

Wonderful. It sounds like you have a lot of options for folks at AAIC. Anything else that your PIA is doing that you wanted to make sure to plug for us today at AAIC or in general? What your PIA is doing, especially for those folks who might be early career or trainees now.

Dr Ece Bayram:

So, for AAIC, we have the features research symposia that our PIA was involved with. We're going to talk about biomarkers for Lewy body dementias. We're going to talk about dementia Lewy bodies in Latin America. We also have another symposium with the neuropsychiatric syndromes PIA. And we're probably going to put a little social hour for our Lewy body dementia PIA crew as well. If you're interested early career, please show up.

And we have things coming up. Like all other PIAs, we have probably a clinical case report webinar coming up in the upcoming year. Because we had our last one that went pretty well, so we tasted success. We want more. And we're always hustling to grow our network, especially the global network.

Because I mean, I think it's a problem with all the PIAs right now. We have amazing people from US, North America, Europe. Amazing, awesome people, brilliant minds. But we need representation.

The research is being done in all other parts of the world too. We want to hear the voices of the researchers from those regions, and we want those people to be represented too. We've been working on a global consortia paper, so we're hoping to involve more people outside of North America and Europe to actually get some included in our consortia paper.

We have been a pretty productive PIA. Luckily, we published a couple papers. We still have more to go. We have at least three in the pipeline right now, if anyone's interested. It's always open to newcomers.

It's not like, "Oh, we're just a small group working on the papers. You're not allowed." We're always happy to get more people involved. If you want to do the work, no one's going to say, "No" to you. We're going to be like, "Yes! Please do the work."

And of course, more conference grants to apply for, more sessions, more prospective sessions we'll be planning. And we always decide what we're going to do at the all-members meeting. It's open to contribution of all the members, not just the steering committee. So, if you're interested in actually making a suggestion, making something different happening in our PIA, we always welcome that.

I also want to note that I was a postdoc just a couple days ago. But when I started this PIA, I was a postdoc. And I felt like it wasn't my place to speak up, to say a lot of things. But luckily, I had a very savage mentor. And she told me, "Oh, honey, if you're not going to speak up, no one will speak up for you. So, you have to piss people off and say what's on your mind."

So that's what I did when I joined the PIA. First couple meetings, I was quiet, coy in a corner. But afterwards, I started speaking up. And I started speaking up against the giants in our field, where I was like, "No, no, no, no, that's not it. That's not how it's done. That's not what we want," et cetera. And they took it very well. I was very pleasantly surprised.

No one said, "How dare you? I'm a legend. Stay in your corner." But instead, everyone was like, "Oh, tell me more. Why do you think that? How's that happening?" I feel like since our field is a bit smaller compared to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's fields, we're really desperate for growth. We're really desperate for new people to join.

And that's why our legendary people, our seniors are so approachable, so easy to chat with. They're just so eager to hear what you want, what you're interested in. So, there was a lot of opportunities for growth in our PIA. I mean, within a couple years, I became the communications chair, and I got our current PIA chair, the incoming PIA chair, Joe Kane. He was one of my references when I was applying for jobs, and I met him at the PIA.

There's a lot of opportunity for networking. No one introduced me to him. I met him during the PIA. So, you can actually build your own connections, make your own friendships, collaborations to keep things moving in your career too, beyond the PIA itself.

And we're a group of very nice, awkward, weird people too. The meetings are usually fun as well. We talk about random things on top of the science that we should be doing, the collaborations. We also talk about a lot of random things, and I really enjoy it. We have a very friendly environment. It's pretty nice. So, it's fun. It's exciting. Very open to all the newcomers. We're desperate for newcomers.

Dr Jessica Caldwell:

It sounds like a great, great group. And thank you so much, Ece. I'm really excited that we were able to talk today.

At this point, it's time to end today's podcast. Before we go, I do have one final question. You touched on this a lot, but would you just tell us your top reason why listeners should sign up for your PIA?

Dr Ece Bayram:

It's so hard to pick one. Well, I'll say because we need newcomers, and we need your voice in there. We keep hearing the good old traditional voices speaking up again and again, which is great. We need some new voices. We need some new challenges. We need to push the field, and it's not going to happen without you.

Dr Jessica Caldwell:

It sounds like this PIA is just a great place to get involved, to get potentially mentored, to hear the big names in the field, and to interact with folks that otherwise you might not have access to, and really to make a difference in this research. Sounds good to me.

Thank you very much, Dr. Bayram, for taking the time to join us today. You can find profiles on myself and my brilliant guest and information on how to become involved in ISTAART on our website at dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk, and also at www.alz.orgistaart. There is a link in the show notes.

I'm Jessica Caldwell, and you've been listening to the Relay Podcast from Dementia Researcher and the Alzheimer's Association. Hit Subscribe on YouTube or in your favourite podcast app to ensure you don't miss an episode. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Voice Over:

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