Oscar L. Lopez MD

Dr. Lopez is the Director of the University of Pittsburgh Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, the principal investigator of 3 NIH-funded grants, and he is co-investigator in other 6 NIH-funded projects and consultant in another 3. Dr. Lopez is conducting a large-scale study in the clinical diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which is considered an intermediate state between normalcy and dementia. His findings are relevant to an understanding of the symptom profile and nosology of MCI.

Dr. Lopez is currently conducting studies, as principal investigator and co-investigator, of the factors that modulate the transition from normal to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and to dementia in relationship to cerebral amyloid deposition. These studies examine how cardiovascular and cerebrovascular factors create a vulnerability state for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and neurodegeneration, and how they affect physiologically relevant compensatory mechanisms in the brain using MRI, FDG-PET, and Pittsburgh Compound B (PiB) technologies.