Ayeisha Milligan Armstrong.

Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI) Work Experience Volunteer Ayeisha Milligan Armstrong has been awarded a highly-prized 2018 Dementia Centre for Research Collaboration (DCRC) Postgraduate Scholarship.

Ayeisha, who is a former CHIRI Honours student, received one of only three of the highly-competitive scholarships awarded nationally this year. She will use the scholarship of $30,000 a year for three years to investigate links between chronic stress and increased risk of cognitive decline seen in cases of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Ayeisha’s research will be co-supervised by CHIRI’s Associate Professor David Groth and A/Professor Giuseppe Verdile, as well as A/Professor Simon Laws from ECU and the Ralph and Patricia Sarich Neuroscience Research Institute.

There is evidence that how the body responds to the stress hormone cortisol and glucocorticoid steroid hormones (such as corticosteroids) could be different depending on the type of variant in genes involved in the stress response pathway called the HPA axis. Implications for AD risk and how this may promote pathology remains to be determined.

“My research is part of a project to identify variants in stress-related genes that are associated with a risk profile or progression consistent with Alzheimer’s disease and to investigate how these variants are involved in the disease,” Ayeisha said.

“Using available genetic data from the Australian Imaging Biomarker and Lifestyle study of ageing, I will identify those gene variants that are associated with risk of cognitive decline and AD risk biomarkers.

“The effect of these genetic variants on the function of the brain immune cells called microglia will also be studied.”

Microglia are cells that when over-stimulated can promote a key early process occurring in the AD brain called neuroinflammation.

An approach where an individual’s blood cell called a monocyte can be converted into a brain microglia-like cells will be used to investigate whether the response of microglia to stress and steroid hormones is dependent on the presence of certain types of stress gene variants.

Understanding this process will inform how related genetic variants influence the brains response to stress and treatments using glucocorticoid hormones.