Reaching for Center of Excellence status for Lewy Body Dementia

By Jeff Kelley 

The VCU Parkinson’s and Movement Disorders Center is applying for designation as a Research Center of Excellence for Lewy body dementia (LBD), which would help further PMDC’s efforts to find better ways to treat people with that disease.

Matthew Barrett, M.D., recently submitted an application to the Lewy Body Dementia Association seeking Research Center of Excellence designation for PMDC. Barrett, a VCU associate professor of neurology, has been researching LBD and Parkinson’s disease (PD) for the past decade.

“My overall research goal is to improve the lives of patients with these diseases,” Barrett says in the LBDA application. “I recognize the importance of accurate and early diagnosis for improving the treatment of Lewy body dementia.”

LBD is the second most common cause of dementia and is associated with unrelenting cognitive decline, profound burdens on caregivers, and higher healthcare costs compared with Alzheimer’s disease.

Barrett has been conducting research that seeks to detect LBD more quickly by developing a physiological biomarker that uses non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG). That approach seeks to use electrical activity in the brain to identify LBD’s distinctive cognitive fluctuations, the instances of impaired attention or reduced arousal that are tell-tale signs of the disease.

Barrett is hopeful the PMDC will receive the Research Center of Excellence designation, explaining that the center brings numerous strengths to the field of LBD research. Among those are an ongoing research grant from the National Institutes of Health, an LBD-specific support group, and two clinical trials for people with the disease, Barrett says.

“We have now enrolled 46 participants and are well on our way to our goal of 70,” Barrett says.

The PMDC application notes VCU would be an “ideal place” to be a Research Center of Excellence for LBD because of the university’s institutional support for research, the clinical and research staff available here to support studies into the disease, the presence of the caregiver support group, and Barrett’s research into LBD.

If PMDC’s request is granted by the LDBA, it would be another Center of Excellence designation for the center. The PMDC is already considered a Center of Excellence for Parkinson’s disease, Huntington disease, and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.