4 April 2022
Late-Onset Alcohol Abuse Can Be a Presenting Symptom of Dementia, Researchers Find
Patients who start abusing alcohol later in life – after age 40 – may be doing so secondary to an underlying neurologic condition, such as frontotemporal dementia, according to findings by a team of researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the University of California, San Francisco.
31 March 2022
Damage to Inner Ear System Predicts Fall Risk Among People with Alzheimer’s Disease
A Johns Hopkins Medicine study of about 50 people with Alzheimer’s disease has added to evidence that damage to the inner ear system that controls balance is a major factor in patients’ well-documented higher risk of falling. Overall, the researchers say, their study found that impairment of the vestibular system was linked to a 50% increase in the risk of falling for patients with Alzheimer’s compared with patients who have Alzheimer’s and normal vestibular function.
9 March 2022
Baycrest-Led Audiology Study Finds Screening Memory Clinic Patients for Hearing Loss Helps in Physicians’ Management of Important Risk Factors for Dementia
A new study led by a Baycrest clinician-scientist titled “Enhancing Clinical Visibility of Hearing Loss in Cognitive Decline” demonstrated that point of care screening for hearing loss in patients of a memory clinic raised physicians’ awareness of its high prevalence among their patients and led to more frequent referrals for hearing help.
4 March 2022
Damage Early in Alzheimer’s Disease Identified via Novel MRI Approach
Alzheimer’s disease usually is diagnosed based on symptoms, such as when a person shows signs of memory loss and difficulty thinking. Up until now, MRI brain scans haven’t proven useful for early diagnosis in clinical practice. Such scans can reveal signs of brain shrinkage due to Alzheimer’s, but the signs only become unmistakable late in the course of the disease, long after the brain is significantly damaged and most people have been diagnosed via other means.
14 February 2022
Lower Acculturation Linked with Poorer Cognitive Function in Older Hispanics
A new study on culture and cognition found that long-term Hispanic immigrants who were less acculturated to the US performed significantly worse on cognitive function tests than their highly acculturated peers. A team of researchers led by scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign assessed the acculturation levels and cognitive function of more than 600 Hispanics age 60 or older who were born in or had immigrated to the US.
27 January 2022
Preliminary Effect of Transcranial Electrical Stimulation on Protein Clearance in Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) incidence is constantly increasing worldwide and patients have limited therapeutic options, that ultimately are not able to stop the cognitive decline. A recent study, published in JAD, has found preliminary results of clearance of the toxic proteins that accumulates in the brain of patients with AD after 1 month of noninvasive electrical treatment. Results were paralleled by an increase in fast oscillatory brain activity in the so-called Gamma frequency band, usually decreased in patients with AD.
24 January 2022
Less Psychosocial Problems in Patients with Dementia During Second COVID-19 Lockdown
Patients with dementia and their loved ones are now better able to adapt to the challenges of a lockdown. They reported less psychosocial problems, such as anxiety, during the second lockdown. They also experienced more social support compared to the first lockdown. This is the conclusion of a study into the psychosocial consequences of the pandemic for patients with dementia and their loved ones. The results were recently published in JAD.
10 January 2022
rTMS as a Treatment for Veterans with Cognitive Impairment and Multiple Comorbidities
Current treatments for Alzheimer’s disease are of limited effectiveness and do not halt the progression of the disease and associated cognitive decline. A study, published in JAD, shows that a novel treatment, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), may have the potential of improving the memory function in veterans with cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease.
23 December 2021
Serious Cognitive Impairment Declines 23% Among Older American Women Over a Decade
A new nationally representative study published online in JAD found an abrupt decline in the prevalence of cognitive impairment among American adults aged 65 and older compared to the same age group a decade earlier. In 2008, 12.2% of older Americans reported serious cognitive problems. In 2017, the percentage had declined to 10.0%. To put this into perspective, if the prevalence of cognitive impairment had remained at the 2008 levels, an additional 1.13 million older Americans would have experienced cognitive impairment in 2017.
6 December 2021
Having at Least a High School Degree and a Complex Job Linked to Dementia Prevention
An international research collaboration has found that high occupational complexity is associated with dementia-free survival time, highlighting the importance of maintaining cognitive stimulation throughout life for lowering the risk of dementia. The collaboration, led by UNSW Sydney’s Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA), analysed 10,195 older adults across seven international studies from the Cohort Studies of Memory in an International Consortium (COSMIC).
Pages
