12 July 2016
Estrogen Patch in Newly Postmenopausal Women May Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk
Can estrogen preserve brain function and decrease the risk of Alzheimer’s disease when given early in menopause? Newly postmenopausal women who received estrogen via a skin patch had reduced beta-amyloid deposits, the sticky plaques found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease, a Mayo Clinic study published this month in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease found. Ultimately, these deposits harm neurons, leading to cognitive problems.
12 July 2016
Driving ability of people with cognitive impairment difficult to assess: research review
No single assessment tool is able to consistently determine driving ability in people with Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment, a St. Michael’s Hospital research review has found. Individuals with very mild and mild Alzheimer’s disease who took a road test had a failure rate of 13.6 and 33.3 per cent respectively, compared to a failure rate of 1.6 per cent in drivers without Alzheimer’s disease. However, in general, patients with any degree of Alzheimer’s disease still had a pass rate of almost more than 46 per cent. The comprehensive research review, published today in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, found largely inconsistent results across 32 studies that looked at various cognitive tests in conjunction with driving outcomes, on-road evaluations and driving simulations.
23 May 2016
Current Screening Methods Miss Worrisome Number of Persons with Mild Cognitive Impairment
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a slight but noticeable and measurable decline in cognitive abilities, such as remembering names or a list of items. While changes may not be severe enough to disrupt daily life, a clinical diagnosis of MCI indicates an increased risk of eventually developing Alzheimer’s disease or another type of dementia.
11 May 2016
Genetic Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease Associated with Changes in Brain Metabolism in Young Adults
A team of investigators at Midwestern University, an affiliate institution of the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium, now report that young adult brain donors who carried a common genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease showed large changes in pathways involving the uptake and use of sugars and ketone bodies — the primary sources of energy for the brain. The average age of the donors was approximately 30, well before any sign of the microscopic abnormalities commonly associated with the disease commonly appear, and almost five decades before the age at which they might develop symptoms.
26 April 2016
Abnormally Low Blood Flow Indicates Damage to NFL Players’ Brains
Researchers used sophisticated neuroimaging and powerful predictive analytics to reveal decreased blood flow in specific brain regions and correlate these findings with cognitive and behavioral impairment, according to a new report in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
25 April 2016
Simple Mind-Body Therapies Shown to Improve Subjective Cognitive Decline, a Pre-Clinical Stage of Alzheimer’s Disease
Lead investigator Kim Innes, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology in the WVU School of Public Health, and her team have published a new study in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. The article details findings from their recent study of adults with subjective cognitive decline (SCD), which suggest that the practice of two simple mind-body therapies may have multiple benefits for patients with preclinical memory loss.
22 April 2016
Problems finding your way around may be earliest sign of Alzheimer’s disease, study suggests
Long before Alzheimer’s disease can be diagnosed clinically, increasing difficulties building cognitive maps of new surroundings may herald the eventual clinical onset of the disorder, finds new research from Washington University in St. Louis. “These findings suggest that navigational tasks designed to assess a cognitive mapping strategy could represent a powerful new tool for detecting the very earliest Alzheimer’s disease-related changes in cognition,” said senior author Denise Head, associate professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences in Arts & Sciences.
12 April 2016
B-School Innovation Professor Discovers Pathway between Diabetes and Alzheimer’s Disease
In a new paper published by The Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Professor Melissa Schilling, a strategy and innovation expert at the NYU Stern School of Business, uncovers a surprising new connection between diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease: hyperinsulinemia, which is most often caused by prediabetes, early or undiagnosed diabetes, or obesity, is responsible for almost half of all cases of Alzheimer’s disease.
12 April 2016
Why do people with Alzheimer's stop recognizing their loved ones?
Alzheimer’s not only steals people’s memories but also their ability to recognize faces, which widens the gulf between people with this disease and their loved ones. A recent study has demonstrated that, beyond causing memory problems, Alzheimer’s disease also impairs visual face perception. This finding may help families better understand their loved one's inevitable difficulties and lead to new avenues to postpone this painful aspect of the disease. Research in this area by the team of Dr. Sven Joubert, PhD, a researcher at the Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal of the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal and a professor with the Department of Psychology at Université de Montréal, has just been published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
16 March 2016
Infrequent home computer use may be indicative of early cognitive decline
A new study sheds light on a powerful tool that may detect signs of Alzheimer’s disease before patients show any symptoms of cognitive decline: the home computer.
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