While Alzheimer’s disease (AD) cognitively affects older individuals, the pathology of AD begins decades earlier in the brain. In order to truly understand factors affecting AD pathogenesis and progression, it is necessary to examine younger individuals during early stages of AD prior to cognitive decline. However, younger aging cohorts are quite rare and represent an uncommon and extremely valuable resource in AD research. This project supports continued brain tissue banking in a younger, diverse aging cohort and creating a digital slide resource of young aging brains for the scientific community. It would also support early efforts at understanding whether the hypothesized link between opioid use disorder and AD pathology in the brain holds true in the current era of fentanyl and polysubstance use disorder. This cohort is a rare resource in the scientific community and, through continued funding support for this effort, we hope to continue contributing to scientific efforts aimed at understanding pathogenesis and progression of early AD pathology.
