Trump Administration Funding Cuts Threaten to Halt Alzheimer's Study Before Results Reach Participants

A federally funded study examining Alzheimer's disease risk among roughly 600 aging Americans may be forced to close without sharing cognitive test results with participants, according to The Guardian, even though researchers say they already possess the data needed to do so.

The Trump administration canceled the federal research grant supporting the study in August, according to the report. The study focused on residents of two low-income, majority Black neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Researchers were given 90 days to wind down the study, the report said, a timeline more than five months earlier than originally planned. As a result, the research team says it lacks sufficient time and money to complete the assessment of data already collected from trial participants and communicate those findings back to them.

The Guardian described the Pittsburgh Alzheimer's study cancellation as the latest example of a broader pattern of disruption to biomedical research funding under the Trump administration. According to the report, the administration has canceled, frozen, or otherwise disrupted more than 5,700 medical research grants over the past two years.

The Guardian did not name the researchers or the specific funding agency involved in its excerpt, nor did it specify how much money had been allocated to the study or what other studies might be affected by similar funding actions. The report did not include comment from the Trump administration on the rationale for the grant cancellation.

The disruption raises concerns about the fate of participants, many of them elderly, who volunteered for cognitive testing as part of research into Alzheimer's risk factors. It remains unclear whether alternative funding sources or extensions might allow researchers to complete the analysis before the shutdown deadline.