Medical Care Corporation Validates Digital Cognitive Biomarkers for Alzheimer's Disease

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Nov. 19, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Medical Care Corporation (MCC) today announced a successful validation of its method for quantifying unobservable cognitive deficits that occur prior to the symptomatic stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). A study published in the Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease reports that MCC's digital cognitive biomarkers showed clear signals in adults with normal cognition who would develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease within three years.

Analyzing longitudinal data drawn from subjects enrolled in the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging, MCC's digital cognitive biomarkers were able to quantify the unobservable cognitive processes of storage and retrieval that humans use to learn and remember new information. These digital biomarkers, derived from a hierarchical Bayesian analysis of results on a brief list learning task, have the potential to characterize memory performance at a granular level and provide new insights into overall brain health. 

Dr. William R. Shankle, M.D., M.S., the principal investigator of the study and MCC's Chief Medical Officer, explains, "The brain's ability to store and retrieve new information is represented by independent processes that are affected differently as Alzheimer's disease progresses. Early on, even when overall memory performance appears normal, changes in those underlying processes are already present. These early changes to memory can be quantified using digital biomarkers." 

"This study validates our earlier work showing that important changes occur in the brains of Alzheimer's patients long before the first symptoms of memory loss emerge," added Dr. Junko Hara, Ph.D. and MCC's Chief Science Officer. "These biomarkers will facilitate identification and enrollment of subjects into early-stage Alzheimer's trials, and accelerate timelines for developing new treatments. Furthermore, when new therapies are approved, this approach can be used to identify those patients who will most benefit from timely intervention during the early stages of Alzheimer's disease."

About Medical Care Corporation: Medical Care Corporation (www.mccare.com) is a data analytics company that develops digital biomarkers for characterizing human cognition and brain health. The company's intellectual property includes multiple patents in the cognitive health field, a registry of individuals monitoring their brain health, and a proprietary dataset of two million cognitive assessments that facilitates ongoing R&D.

Research reported in this release was supported by the National Institute On Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R44AG065126.

Contact:
Karen Kalil
714 371-6783
[email protected]

SOURCE Medical Care Corporation