Cynthia Munro
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Neuroscience
Many clinical trials of Alzheimer's disease (AD) treatments have failed, including drugs that lower amyloid, the protein that builds up in the brain in AD. One likely reason is that AD differs from person to person, so finding subgroups that a treatment could target is a priority.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
mild cognitive impairment
stress response
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2028
What they work on
- Determine how cortisol response to acute stress, induced with the Trier Social Stress Test and measured in saliva, relates to memory and executive-function performance after stress in people with mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease.
- Test whether APOE genotype and polygenic risk scores for Alzheimer's disease change the link between the stress-hormone response and cognitive performance after acute stress.
- Identify predictors of cognitive decline and neurodegeneration at 2-year follow-up, drawing on stress responses, genetic risk and blood-based Alzheimer's biomarkers.
- Repeat these analyses separately in 60 men and 60 women to identify sex-specific predictors of stress-induced cognitive impairment and later decline.
More about the research
Many studies suggest that people who are especially sensitive to stress face a higher risk of AD. That makes stress sensitivity a promising candidate. Yet careful lab studies of the body's hormonal stress response have rarely been combined with careful study of patients.
Why it matters
With many amyloid-lowering treatments for Alzheimer's disease failing, new treatment targets are needed. If heightened stress-hormone reactivity predicts faster decline in people with mild cognitive impairment, it could flag a group of at-risk individuals for future prevention trials. These trials could target the HPA stress system. The work could also reveal whether men and women need different approaches.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Catherine Clelland
Columbia University, NY·Neuroscience
Test whether disrupted BH4 production, driven by functional variants in the GCH1 gene that controls BH4 synthesis, lowers BH4 levels and predicts cognitive impairment in patients with Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment.
Ulf Bronas
Georgetown University, DC·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether a 6-month home-based walking program improves executive function and other areas of thinking in 116 older adults with chronic kidney disease and mild cognitive impairment, compared with an attention control group.
Jamie Maguire
Tufts University, MA·Neuroscience
Test whether activity in the pathway from stress-hormone CRH neurons in the hypothalamus to the brainstem's nucleus of the solitary tract is increased in chronically epileptic mice at risk of SUDEP.
The school
Johns Hopkins University: 100 labs on PI Pages, $4.1B a year on research, 622 research doctorates a year.
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