Augusta, GA
I-TEAM: Augusta University doctor makes breakthrough in Alzheimer’s research
![I-TEAM: Augusta University doctor makes breakthrough in Alzheimer’s research I-TEAM: Augusta University doctor makes breakthrough in Alzheimer’s research](https://gray-wrdw-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/Vv_z8itmLPBwwAF4Iq7X2QAXR6w=/980x0/smart/filters:quality(85)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/JPYEOPWVJFCMDEICFLEHSYYHR4.png)
AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – An all-new I-TEAM investigation has uncovered an alarming development with Alzheimer’s illness.
Specialists predict a big spike in circumstances in simply the subsequent few years, however it’s not all unhealthy information.
Our Meredith Anderson discovered a brand new physician at Augusta College who has made a brand new breakthrough.
By 2025, the Alzheimer’s Affiliation believes circumstances in Georgia and South Carolina will leap by greater than a fourth. At the moment, Georgia is 26.7% ‚and S.C. is 26.3%.
Dr. Qin Wang hasn’t even completed unpacking her lab containers but.
“We’re very, very enthusiastic about this, for certain,” she stated.
She’s able to get transferring on some scientific trials. She’s working to get funding to check a drug that wouldn’t simply decelerate the illness.
It might assist sufferers regain a few of their misplaced psychological skills.
Meredith Anderson: “So this could possibly be the primary?”
Dr. Wang: “May very well be. Yeah. That may be large!”
Big is a little bit of an understatement contemplating the upcoming Alzheimer’s tsunami. Not our description, by the best way. That’s what medical specialists are calling it.
With a projected 12.7 million circumstances flooding the U.S. well being care system by 2050, researchers have to discover a approach to shift to the tide – and shortly – or we’ll all should face the music.
Effectively, I actually don’t thoughts the rain, and the smile can disguise all of the ache.
Reverend Lloyd Tripp liked this tune – his church in Dalton, Georgia – and his household.
Leslie Tripp Holland: “Three of his uncles died from Alzheimer’s.”
When he was recognized with the illness, his daughter says her household leaned on the Alzheimer’s Affiliation for help. She was solely 29 when he died.
“There have been issues like my wedding ceremony, you recognize, and life occasions that hadn’t even occurred but,” she stated.
Holland is now the senior director of selling and communications for the Georgia Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Affiliation. She joined us through Zoom along with her counterpart in South Carolina. It’s private for Beth Sulkowski too.
Sulkowski: “My great-grandfather had Alzheimer’s illness.”
Working within the palmetto state, she faces an extra problem. South Carolina is without doubt one of the high 5 neurology deserts – which means there aren’t sufficient docs to deal with Alzheimer’s, and the ratio is just anticipated to worsen.
“Lower than 10. Neurologists for each 10,000 individuals dwelling with dementia by 2025,” she stated.
In the meantime, in your entire state of Georgia, Holland says there are solely round 100 geriatricians or main care docs with further coaching in treating older adults. And that’s proper now, earlier than the Alzheimer’s tsunami has washed ashore.
“That want goes to wish to go up nearly 400% as effectively, to fulfill the wants as we go alongside,” she stated.
In 2021, the Alzheimer’s Affiliation estimates Georgia and South Carolina racked up a complete of greater than 13.6 billion in unpaid Alzheimer’s care. In the meantime, complete per-person Medicaid funds – for Medicare beneficiaries 65 and older with Alzheimer’s or different dementias are 22 occasions as pricey as different Medicare beneficiaries
Sulkowski: “On the finish of the one manner that we will actually inform change that value curve is to discover a higher approach to deal with this.”
That is the place Dr. Wang is available in. She moved to Augusta final month from Birmingham the place she is going to proceed her work with a drug as soon as used to deal with melancholy and schizophrenia. Idozoxan targets the a part of the mind that controls our so-called ‘struggle or flight’ response.
She discovered the adrenaline it indicators and receives can even set off Alzheimer’s devastating assault on mind cells. In assessments on mice – she discovered it’s been capable of block that, however she found an additional benefit.
Dr. Wang: “We will protect the neurons to noradrenergic neurons and likewise rescue their cognitive operate.”
Which means a few of the Alzheimer’s injury could possibly be reversible.
Meredith Anderson: “That’s an enormous deal.”
Dr. Wang: “That that’s, that’s proper. Yeah.”
Meredith: “That’s giving individuals again their family members if it really works.”
Dr. Wang: “Now we actually hope we will even have this drug examined in people.”
Which may transfer exponentially quicker for the reason that drug has already been examined for one thing else, however the course of nonetheless gained’t be quick.
Dr. Wang nonetheless has to safe funding and do extra paperwork – so trials might possibly start in a 12 months at finest.
Each Holland and Sulkowski admit the wait will be irritating, particularly for households struggling now, however they know researchers like Dr. Wang are making progress each single day.
Sulkowski: “I take hope in that. As a result of although it’s a slow-moving automobile, there are such a lot of automobiles on the freeway, there are such a lot of pathways that we’re working in direction of.”
Together with issues all of us can do proper now, like food regimen and train, as researchers search for new connections between a wholesome physique and thoughts.
Holland: “We’re additionally actually engaged on ways in which we will all reside higher and age higher and age more healthy. Eeven with the illness, we will reside our greatest, for much longer.”
None of this could carry again Holland’s father. Dr. Wang’s member of the family she misplaced to Alzheimer’s.
“Yeah, yeah. My in-law, really,” she stated.
She is aware of firsthand how Alzheimer’s is the one illness the place it’s a must to lose a liked one – twice.
“He was so caring and so so light, so thoughtful, however then he simply modified,” stated Dr. Wang.
Which has made her dedication to discovering a remedy now a lot extra private than when she began. She additionally hopes her story evokes others – particularly younger ladies – to get into biomedical analysis.
You by no means know whose life you would possibly be capable to save someday. We’ll regulate Dr. Wang analysis for you.
If somebody you like has been recognized with Alzheimer’s, they hope you attain out to your native chapter of the Alzheimer’s Affiliation. They can assist you and also you and your loved ones in so some ways.
Copyright 2022 WRDW/WAGT. All rights reserved.
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Augusta, GA
Deadly accident shuts down lanes on Deans Bridge Road
![Deadly accident shuts down lanes on Deans Bridge Road Deadly accident shuts down lanes on Deans Bridge Road](https://gray-wrdw-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/v2/BZU5OD54BNAWNDDISA4PJVUWKU.jpg?auth=5877b7ce6e36c89b514075520a1f8d352ade14eda4ce2597a1ee6718f4ae1098&width=1200&height=600&smart=true)
AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – One person has died after a car crash on Deans Bridge Road on Saturday night, according to the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office.
Richmond County dispatchers said the call came in at 9:01 p.m. of a single-car accident with five passengers.
The driver was transported to a local hospital and later died due to their injuries, according to authorities.
The condition of the other passengers remains unknown.
The southbound lanes were shut down as of 10:15 p.m.
Drivers are encouraged to find an alternate route.
Copyright 2024 WRDW/WAGT. All rights reserved.
Augusta, GA
The Dawg Days of summer hit the Junior Players with two (maybe) future UGA players leading
![The Dawg Days of summer hit the Junior Players with two (maybe) future UGA players leading The Dawg Days of summer hit the Junior Players with two (maybe) future UGA players leading](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/authoring/authoring-images/2024/08/31/NFTU/75032900007-hamilton-coleman.jpg?auto=webp&crop=1919,1081,x0,y129&format=pjpg&width=1200)
Mason Howell birdies his last two holes, Hamilton Coleman posts the tournament’s low score on their way to the final group for Sunday’s final round at Players Stadium Course.
TPC Sawgrass, AJGA host the Junior Players Championship for the 18th year
The 18th Junior Players Championship is at the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. It has become a Labor Day Weekend tradition on the First Coast.
One of the players in the final threesome of the 18th Junior Players Championship on Sunday has already decided to play golf at the University of Georgia — despite having two more years until his high school class graduates.
The other, with the same amount of time left in junior golf, still has an open mind. But he’d be bucking family tradition if he didn’t become a Bulldog.
Either way, they have more immediate issues at hand: battling it out in the final threesome in the final round of the Junior Players Championship, at the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass.
Mason Howell of Thomasville, Ga., birdied the hardest par-3 and the hardest par-5 holes on the course to polish off a 70 on Saturday, and at 5-under-par 139 has a one-shot lead over Hamilton Coleman of Augusta, Ga., (68, the tournament’s low round for the first two days), who birdied No. 17 and then made a gutsy par at the last to finish at 4-under.
Logan Reilly of Lovettsville, Va. (72), who held a share of the 18-hole lead, is in third at 3-under, Luke Colton of Frisco, Texas (72) is fourth at 2-under and Kailer Stone of Alameda, Calif. (71) is fifth at 1-under.
They are the only players who have broken par for the first 36 holes.
Reilly earned his spot in the final three some when he rallied from a stretch of three bogeys in four holes to birdie Nos. 8 and 9.
First Coast players lagging behind
After Miles Russell became the first resident of the First Coast to win the Junior Players last year — with Phillip Dunham of Ponte Vedra Beach finishing second and Tyler Mawhinney of Fleming Island in a tie for sixth — it will take an extraordinary final round for any of them to reach the top 10, much less contend.
Junior Players leaderboard
Junior Players final-round groups, tee times
Dunham (75) and Jackson Byrd of St. Simons Island, Ga., (73) are tied for 18th at 3-over. Dunham made only one birdie but it was at his final hole, the par-5 ninth.
Lucas Gimenez of Jacksonville had a wild ride over the Stadium Course, signing for a card that contained four pars, seven birdies, five bogeys and two double bogeys. It added up to a 74 and he’s tied for 31st at 5-over.
Russell got his score to even par through 13 holes and was only four off the lead at the time. But he bogeyed four of his last five holes and shot 76. He’s tied for 34th at 6-under with Mawhinney (77).
Ambrose Kinnare of St. Augustine (83) is tied for 68th at 15-over.
Junior Players leaders putt, scramble well
Both of the leaders said the course takes a mental toll on players, especially off the tee.
“The greens are in really good shape but you have to play really smart to get there,” said Howell, who hasn’t made a college decision yet but is from a Bulldog family — both his parents graduated from UGA. “If you have one lapse you’re in trouble. You can’t just walk up to a tee and whack at it.”
Coleman agreed with the sight lines off the Stadium Course tees.
“They are just so demanding,” he said. “There is not a breather hole off the tee. Every tee shot, you’re kind of stressing. Once you’re in the fairway and in the right position, you can kind of attack.”
Howell, Coleman get hot at different times
Howell is 14th on the AJGA Rolex Rankings and has five top-10 finishes this year in AGJA or national junior events, including a tie for fifth in the Western Junior.
He was 1-over for his first 10 holes after starting his round at the par-4 10th, then dropped birdie putts of 15 feet at No. 2 and 20 feet at No. 5. Howell capped his day when he drilled a 4-iron from 211 yards out to set up a 35-foot birdie putt at the par-3 eighth, then pitched onto the green of the par-5 ninth hole in three, and made a 3-footer.
Coleman, who verbally committed to Georgia last week, is 91st on the Rolex Rankings. He bounced back from a bogey at No. 2 with short birdie putts at Nos. 3, 4, 7 and 9, a stretch highlighted by a 6-iron against the wind from 176 yards out to within inches of the hole at the seventh.
Coleman birdied the 13th hole on a 15-foot putt at No. 13 and then chipped in from the right-front of the 14th green for birdie, negotiating a difficult angle to the front-left pin.
He almost holed out another short-game shot at the last. Coleman pushed his drive right and had to punch out from the trees. The ball rolled onto and over the green, settling into the left bunker. His sand shot tickled the edge of the hole before rolling 8 feet away, but he made the comebacker for par.
“I scrambled well, definitely,” Coleman said. “My irons have been really solid all week. I just need to tighten up the driver a little bit tomorrow.”
Howell, Coleman have played often
As South Georgia residents, Howell and Coleman know each other well and have played numerous times with and against each other and paired up for a practice round earlier in the week.
“He’s always fun to play with,” Coleman said. “Every time we play together we have fun.”
They also have a good track record on the First Coast. Howell is in his first Junior Players but he won the Billy Horschel Junior Championship on Oct. 5, 2023. Coleman tied for 18th in last year’s Junior Players and tied for third in the Horschel Junior Championship (which is played under a Stableford format), one point out of a playoff between Howell and Clark Van Gaalen.
Augusta, GA
THE SCORE: Behind the Scenes with the Silver Bluff band
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