Interviews with the Partners of the VERA Research Project - Ligia Dominguez, Professor at 'KORE' University of Enna.

🎥 Our VERA Research interview series continues.

Today, we are pleased to introduce Professor Ligia Dominguez Rodríguez, Professor at KORE University of Enna and a partner in the VERA Research Project.

In this interview, Professor Dominguez Rodríguez shares her perspective on the VERA Project, highlighting its research activities, objectives, and the opportunities it offers.

Watch the video below to discover her insights, and stay tuned for more interviews featuring our project partners.

🎥 Video: https://youtu.be/VdOQavJoUog

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🗣️ Interview:

I am Ligia Dominguez Rodríguez and I am a Full Professor of Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at “KORE” University of Enna but I collaborate closely with the University of Palermo, another of the partners in this project.

I have to say that this project is practically what we clinicians expected because we this project as my colleagues have certainly said talks about the evaluation of motor changes and also other parameters that are measured through the evaluation of sweat, of the molecules that can be evaluated in sweat, that can be estimated in sweat, of these people who have moderate mild Alzheimer’s or even people with mild cognitive decline.

I have to say that this is the stage of the disease of this disease which is very disabling.

We know that it is one of the most disabling causes in the global epidemiology mark which tends to increase due to the increasing aging of the population.

So it’s a disease that gets a lot of attention due to its impact both on health in general but especially on disability in old age.

So I have to say that this project of collaboration that aims to evaluate and detect small initial motor alterations in the patient with cognitive decline or with alzheimer’s is to see how it happens over time, how it progresses over time and can be a prognostic factor of what will be the possibility that a person for example with mild cognitive decline could become a demented person, a person with alzheimer’s disease itself.

This really makes us think about the application it can have in the future for people who may also have some chance on our part of Doctors who suspect that a person is at risk of developing actual dementia.

Catch it at the beginning because it is obviously more manageable at the beginning.

We can take measures to prevent this progression and therefore the application is really very low.

I am delighted to collaborate with the Engineers.

I’m a clinician and I’m very interested but we did all these evaluation tests from a clinical point of view, let’s say manually.

Instead now by agreeing with Engineers who obviously have other very high-profile computer engineers.

We can grasp these things through artificial intelligence, through the use of artificial intelligence strategies to grasp these minimal alterations that can grasp the possibility of disease even before they are frankly evident from a clinical point of view.

Therefore of applicability certainly there is a lot in the clinical field but also in the population; prevention which is what interests us most because it must always be said that prevention is better to prevent than not to cure because when patients who already have a very severe Alzheimer’s disease come to us, for example, it is much more difficult to manage and there are no therapies.

Now there have been a couple of drugs approved but whose effect is limited, is not so much.

So instead if we catch a patient at the onset we can do many prevention measures because I also remember that before it was thought that Alzheimer’s disease was a fatal fate that could not be prevented.

Instead now the last data tell us that the disease or progression to severe Alzheimer’s disease can be as much as 42%.

So by managing these patients who have risk, who have mild cognitive decline or onset of Alzheimer’s disease we can do prevention measures that interfere on the progression and the truly severe Alzheimer’s disease that is so disabling.

Speaking of the difficulties that may arise so far in this project the first thing was the application to the Ethics Committee.

Obviously this is a research that is already approved in our website of the University of Palermo was approved by the Ethics Committee which is a Regional Ethics Committee that also includes an evaluation of both the methods and the application, that is, it includes people in an important clinical setting.

So we had some difficulties in approving it because obviously being these fragile patients who have even mild cognitive decline.

However they had many questions about what type of sensor they used if they were in any way risky for the patients if the exercises we did or say the methods we use to evaluate these patients were risky for patients and we obviously contested all the questions asked by the Ethics Committee and fully resolved these doubts.

So last week was the final approval of the Ethics Committee from the execution of this project.

Another difficulty that sometimes arises in this type of study is the enrollment of patients.

Fortunately we have a fairly large number of users in the Alzheimer’s cognitive decline unit of the University of Palermo.

So we will certainly have no difficulty in choosing and enrolling these patients.

Obviously we will have to inform are very good not only the patients because sometimes they are not capable of understanding all this that we are proposing if not also their caregivers; their families who always have a lot of questions about what we are doing in this study but we have already had experience of collaborating with the Engineering Faculty of “KORE” with another project that has been funded and that we are finishing on the evaluation of written and oral language always with artificial intelligence.

So it is already another project model and we think that on this we will have no difficulty and it will be very possible to make an adequate enrollment obviously choosing patients who voluntarily want to participate.

No one is obliged.

We always have the informed consent that will be given to patients when possible or to the caregiver and family when you are indispensable because they do not already have the judgment to be able to sign these consents.