03 Jan Wisconsin woman participates in Alzheimer’s disease study after losing father

By Abbey Taylor, Spectrum News 1

Marilyn Krause found her passion for cooking and baking later in life.

“When your dad is a chef and your mom is a good cook, you really don’t have to cook,” said Krause. “There’s always someone to do it.”

Her parents, Arthur and Rose Maniaci, owned Maniaci’s Cafe Siciliano in Fox Point. Italian cuisine was her father’s speciality. She said he knew his recipes from memory.

“My dad was optimistic,” said Krause. “Very happy-go-lucky. Hard working. When you have eight children, you have to work really hard to support them.”

Over the years, her father’s health started to decline. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

“He still did a lot of cooking and baking but then as things progressed, he lost the ability to follow a recipe and he knew it,” said Krause. “I think that was very difficult for him.”

A few years after her father passed away from the disease, Krause saw an ad in the local paper for an Alzheimer’s disease clinical trial at UW Health in Madison.

“They were looking for people 65 and older or people 55 and older with someone in their family who had Alzheimer’s and I had qualified both ways,” said Krause.

After a series of tests, she was selected to participate in the AHEAD Study. It’s an international clinical trial aiming to prevent the disease and create a treatment that delays memory loss. Read more …