PODIUMM is a collaboration between the Old age psychiatry department GGZ inGeest, and the departments of Psychiatry, the Alzheimercenter and Neurochemistry laboratory of Amsterdam UMC.

There is substantial symptomatic and neuropsychological overlap between psychiatric disorders at an older age and early dementia stages. This is the case for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but also for other forms of dementia, like frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Lewy body dementia (DLB). It is widely known that somatic care in patients with mental illnesses is inadequate, substantially delayed and life expectancy is decreased 10-20 years. The same delay exists for comorbid neurodegeneration in patients with (recurring) depression, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Previously available biomarkers for neurodegeneration such as PET-scans or examining CSF via lumbar puncture are invasive, costly and burdensome. New and easily accessible blood based biomarkers for neurodegeneration are currently being developed, but evidence regarding the utility of these blood-based biomarkers is restricted to highly selected cohorts without psychiatric comorbidity.
The aim of the PODIUMM study is to identify the utility of these and future blood-based biomarkers in the large population of patients with psychiatric comorbidity. Furthermore, we aim to explore the concordance of these blood biomarkers with clinical diagnosis, management choices, severity of cognitive complaints, treatment effect and disease progression.

It is Welmoed Krudop’s goal to ensure that the latest scientific discoveries in cognitive neurology become clinically available for complex psychiatric patients, especially since the European Medicines Agency has recently approved the first pharmacotherapeutic treatment for early Alzheimer’s disease. It is precisely this group that could benefit the most from non-invasive, easily accessible diagnostics that could improve patient care and management.