UW-Madison’s Alzheimer’s disease research program, which runs the country’s largest study of children of parents with the disease, is about to expand significantly.

The university is now home to one of 17 major national Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers, officials are announcing Friday.

The distinction comes with a $6.9 million federal grant over five years. It brings the ability to recruit more scientists, attract more research money and take part in more studies, said Dr. Sanjay Asthana, director of the center.

Campus researchers will work to reveal the secrets of the disease, marked by progressive dementia, that afflicts an estimated 5.3 million Americans, including more than 100,000 people in Wisconsin. The focus: developing tests and therapies to prevent Alzheimer’s before symptoms arise.

"We’ll do the same kinds of tests we’ve been doing on more people, along with new tests," Asthana said.

A ‘cruel’ disease

For Bob and Sharon Rowland, of Mazomanie, the growing research brings hope.

Bob, 76, a retired engineer, started mixing up his left and right turns three years ago when the couple was traveling in their RV.

Now the handyman who could fix anything can barely use a screwdriver.

"It’s just so cruel," said Sharon, 71.

She said she hopes a study Bob is in, of a soy product that might boost cognition, slows his illness and helps their three sons. The sons are at greater risk for the disease because their father has it.

Barbara White, 49, of Madison, whose mother and two aunts had Alzheimer’s, is in the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention, or WRAP.

The study is following 950 middle-aged people who have at least one parent who has had Alzheimer’s, along with 350 control subjects. It is the largest such study in the country, said Dr. Mark Sager, who runs it. Scientists are tracking changes as the participants age.

White and the others, including her three siblings, come to the university for memory tests and blood draws. Some get brain scans and provide samples of their spinal fluid.

"It seems likely that I could be affected by Alzheimer’s at some point," said White, a psychotherapist. "This seems like an easy thing I can do to contribute to the research."

The new grant will add more minorities from the Milwaukee area to WRAP, Sager said. A separate group with a family history of Alzheimer’s will be formed to study whether drugs, such as cholesterol-lowering medications called statins, help prevent the disease.

Early changes in the brain

Until 1998, UW-Madison had no Alzheimer’s research program.

That year, Sager formed the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute. Asthana arrived three years later, creating the Wisconsin Comprehensive Memory Program. He recruited other scientists, most of whom work at Madison’s Veterans Hospital.

Among them is Sterling Johnson. His study involving brain scans of WRAP participants, in 2006, became a turning point for the Madison researchers.

A gene called ApoE4 increases the risk of Alzheimer’s. Johnson studied people with and without a family history of the disease, independent of whether they carry the gene.

He repeatedly showed them pictures of objects — including a coat, a flower and a hammer — before they had an MRI scan that captures a movie of brain activity.

During the scan, pictures flashed before their eyes. Some were the familiar objects. Others were new objects, including an airplane, a chicken and a boot. The people pressed buttons to indicate whether the pictures were old or new.

Nearly everyone got the answers right. But differences were seen in their hippocampuses, a region of the brain involved in Alzheimer’s and memory. Those with a family history of the disease had less activity in their hippocampus, whether or not they had the ApoE4 gene.

The significance: The ApoE4 gene likely isn’t the only genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s, and changes can occur in the brains of people with a family history of the disease long before symptoms appear.

"By the time a patient is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the brain has already experienced an extensive amount of damage," Johnson said. "We want to intervene much earlier."

"I can’t fix anything"

White, whose mother and aunts had Alzheimer’s, said she doesn’t worry much about her risk for the disease.

"I monitor my mental health the way I monitor my physical health," she said. "What else can I do?"

Her mother, Carol White, got her master’s degree at age 50 and started working with homeless women and homemakers returning to the work force.

She retained her spunk until her late 70s, traveling to places such as France and Turkey, until she became listless and foggy.

"She would come home from a trip, and not all of her would come home," White said.

Her mother moved into the Meriter Retirement Center, now Capitol Lakes, and died in 2007, eight years after learning she had Alzheimer’s.

After Bob Rowland was diagnosed two years ago, he and Sharon ended their 10-year RV odyssey around North America.

"I’m the guy people used to come to to fix things," said Bob, who developed intercom systems for schools and hospitals. "Now I can’t fix anything."

Two Alzheimer’s drugs — Aricept and Namenda — seem to be slowing his mental decline, he said.

But Sharon said the damage continues.

Bob can no longer remember names, she said. He starts a fire and forgets to tend it. A book lover, he reads the same chapter over and over.

"You just keep crossing your fingers that the next pill will come around to help," she said.