Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Canada has 6.6 million older adults, more than half a million of whom live with some form of dementia, mostly Alzheimer’s Disease; this number is increasing at a higher rate than expected and compared to a decade ago. It is expected to increase even faster due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the COVID related social isolation that is also known to adversely affect an individuals’ mental health. Pharmaceutical treatments have so far offered little hope for improving the cognitive state of those impacted. Dementia diagnosis and identifying its subtypes at treatment onset is crucial because Dr. Moussavi’s research has shown non-pharmaceutical treatments are more effective if applied at early stages and with personalized treatment strategies. The strategy depends on dementia severity, other concurrent diseases (comorbidities) and dementia type. Dr. Zahra Moussavi’ Canada Research Chair Tier 1 program will be using engineering-driven methodologies (including artificial intelligence) for diagnosing dementia subtype at dementia symptom onset, predicting the response of a patient to a particular treatment based on dementia severity, other concurrent diseases (comorbidities) and that dementia type to enable offering an optimized, personalized, effective and non-pharmaceutical treatment. In addition, she has a unique mobile clinical laboratory solution to make all these efforts accessible to all sectors of the society regardless regardless of age, race, gender, and remoteness of the community. Dr. Moussavi’s research will unlock some of the mysteries that surround the response of a patient to different treatments and paves the way for more effective personalized treatment options. So far, she has developed accurate methods for predicting which patients will best respond to pulsatile versus electromagnetic therapies. Dr. Moussavi envisions establishing a unique diagnostic and technologically advanced multidimensional, multifaceted, cross-disciplinary integrated treatment center for dementia (and its many subtypes) in Winnipeg that will eventually lead to preventing dementia and enable aging with a healthy brain.