May 9th, 2022 - Eight modifiable risk factors were linked to more than one in three cases of Alzheimer's disease and related dementia in the U.S., a cross-sectional analysis showed. The eight risk factors -- midlife obesity, midlife hypertension, physical inactivity, depression, smoking, low education, diabetes, and hearing loss -- were associated with 36.9% (95% CI 36.5-37.3) of Alzheimer's and dementia cases...

May 6th, 2022 - The armamentarium for rare seizure disorders that begin in childhood has grown in recent years, but the biggest advancements may be just ahead. "It's incremental progress with hopefully some leaps on the horizon," said Kelly Knupp, MD, a pediatric epileptologist at Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora. The 1990s brought a slew of new drugs to the market for the substantial proportion of patie...

May 6th, 2022 - Surgery patients were more likely to dispose of leftover opioid pills when an opioid disposal kit was mailed to them, a randomized clinical trial showed. Among patients who received opioids after an orthopedic or urologic procedure, 60% of those who received an at-home disposal kit said they disposed of extra opioid tablets, reported Anish Agarwal, MD, MPH, MS, of the University of Pennsylvania...

May 5th, 2022 - The first in vitro diagnostic tool to help detect early Alzheimer's disease was authorized by the FDA on Wednesday. The assay measures the ratio of beta-amyloid 1-42 to beta-amyloid 1-40 in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). The Lumipulse G ß-Amyloid Ratio (1-42/1-40) test is intended to be used in adults 55 and older presenting with cognitive impairment who are being evaluated for Alzheimer's disease ...

May 4th, 2022 - Dementia risk was linked with blood levels of certain antioxidants, an observational study showed. Higher serum levels of lutein+zeaxanthin and beta-cryptoxanthin -- two types of carotenoids -- were tied to a lower risk of incident dementia, reported May Beydoun, PhD, MPH, of the NIH National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues, in Neurology. Findings were attenuated in ad...

May 3rd, 2022 - Multidomain interventions -- ones that combined cognitive and physical training, for example -- improved cognitive outcomes in older adults with mild cognitive impairment compared with a single intervention, a meta-analysis showed. Short-term programs composed of two or more interventions led to better global cognition and cognitive domain scores in people with mild cognitive impairment, report...

May 3rd, 2022 - Menopause status moderated sex differences in tau burden, with a divergence in tauopathy between the sexes apparent 20 years earlier than previously reported. (Annals of Neurology) Plasma p-tau was a less consistent marker of brain amyloidosis in Black individuals than in white people. (Neurology) Residential green space was linked with modest cognitive benefits in middle-aged women. (JAMA Netw...

Apr 29th, 2022 - Multiple sclerosis (MS) occurs at the same rate in Black populations as it does in white populations, a large retrospective cohort study found. In Southern California, age- and sex-standardized prevalence of MS per 100,000 population was similarly high among Black and white persons (226 and 238 per 100,000, respectively) and significantly lower among Hispanic and Asian persons (70 and 23 per 10...

Apr 26th, 2022 - Risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome after COVID-19 vaccines was low overall, but unusually high after the Johnson & Johnson shot, surveillance data showed. Among 15.1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines included in the Vaccine Safety Datalink, the unadjusted incidence rate of confirmed Guillain-Barré syndrome 1 to 21 days after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was 32.4 per 100,000 person-year...

Apr 26th, 2022 - Studies linked to Cassava Sciences, a company studying simufilam as an investigational treatment for Alzheimer's disease, continue to be retracted or challenged by medical journals. (New York Times) People with Alzheimer's disease had more somatic mutations in neurons than people without Alzheimer's disease, and those mutations were different from ones seen in normal aging. (Nature) A blood-bas...

Apr 25th, 2022 - Nearly 100,000 dementia cases in the U.S. could have been prevented by improving vision, a cross-sectional analysis suggested. The population attributable fraction -- the proportion of dementia cases that potentially would be prevented if a risk factor was eliminated -- of vision impairment was 1.8% in the 2018 Health and Retirement Study, representing more than 100,000 prevalent cases, wrote J...

Apr 19th, 2022 - Black and Hispanic military veterans in the U.S. had significantly greater dementia risk than white veterans, a large retrospective study showed. Among 1.87 million older adults -- 98% of whom were men -- who received care in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), 13% were diagnosed with dementia over 10 years, reported Kristine Yaffe, MD, of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF)...

Apr 19th, 2022 - Subjective memory complaints were linked with white matter hyperintensity volume changes and cognitive decline. (JAMA Network Open) Astronauts and cosmonauts returning from long-duration spaceflight had increased volume of basal ganglia and white matter perivascular spaces. (PNAS) Cortical tau patterns followed multiple trajectories in cognitively unimpaired people with preclinical Alzheimer's ...

Apr 18th, 2022 - Severity of multiple sclerosis (MS) was linked with geographic latitude, an observational study showed. Among 46,000 MS patients living in temperate zones, more severe disease was seen in those who lived above 40° latitude, reported Tomas Kalincik, MD, PhD, of the University of Melbourne, Australia, and co-authors. The association was driven mainly, but not exclusively, by ultraviolet B (UVB) r...

Apr 15th, 2022 - Serum neurofilament light (NfL), a measure of axonal injury, was associated with incident Parkinson's disease, parkinsonian signs, and decline in physical functioning, a longitudinal study showed. Among 1,300 people in the Chicago Health and Aging Project (CHAP), a twofold higher concentration of serum NfL was associated with incident clinical Parkinson's disease (OR 2.54, 95% CI 1.70-3.81), ac...

Apr 13th, 2022 - A healthy lifestyle was tied to a longer life but the extra years did not mean more time living with Alzheimer's dementia, a prospective study showed. People who had four or five healthy lifestyle factors -- spanning diet, cognitive activity, physical exercise, smoking, and alcohol patterns -- at age 65 lived longer than their counterparts with zero or one healthy factors, according to Klodian ...

Apr 12th, 2022 - Neuroinflammation, microhemorrhages, brain hypoxia, and neuropathology were seen in SARS-CoV-2-infected non-human primates, including animals that did not develop severe respiratory disease. (Nature Communications) A novel measure of delirium severity was associated with length of hospital stay and hospital costs. (JAMA Network Open) Loss of subcortical wake-promoting neurons in Alzheimer's dis...

Apr 11th, 2022 - More severe axon pathology, axon losses, and microvasculopathy were found in the olfactory tissue of people who died with SARS-CoV-2 infection than in people who died without such an infection, a postmortem study showed. Olfactory pathology was especially severe in people who had reported smell alterations, reported Cheng-Ying Ho, MD, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Balti...

Apr 8th, 2022 - Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors for rheumatoid arthritis were linked with a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease and related dementia, but only in people with cardiovascular disease, data from the DREAM (Drug Repurposing for Effective Alzheimer's Medicines) study showed. Among more than 22,000 older adults, targeted disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs overall were not associated with a re...

Apr 8th, 2022 - In its final decision about anti-amyloid monoclonal antibodies for Alzheimer's disease, CMS upheld its proposed plan to cover aducanumab (Aduhelm) only for people in randomized controlled trials. However, the same restrictions won't necessarily apply to all monoclonal antibodies that target amyloid in Alzheimer's, the agency said. "We are finalizing the majority of the proposed decision with a ...