Oct 22nd, 2021 - Relatively young people -- ranging from 38 to 59 years old -- showed cognitive dysfunction or "brain fog" months after being diagnosed with COVID-19, a cross-sectional study found. More than 7 months after acute infection, a substantial proportion of COVID-19 patients exhibited deficits in processing speed, executive functioning, category fluency, memory encoding, and recall, reported Jacquelin...

Oct 19th, 2021 - The antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was associated with reduced disability worsening in people with primary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), a phase II trial showed. (Annals of Neurology) The FDA approved injectable high-dose naloxone (Zimhi) to counter opioid overdose. The drug previously was approved in lower doses under the trade name Narcan. Data from the Vaccine Adverse Even...

Oct 13th, 2021 - You can strike intranasal oxytocin off the list of potential treatments for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), results from the largest prospective trial to date indicated -- though not everyone agrees. ASD symptom scores were no different in children and teens receiving the hormone as a nasal spray for 24 weeks than in a comparable placebo group, according to Linmarie Sikich, MD, of Duke Universi...

Oct 12th, 2021 - Older adults who regularly took bumetanide, a common diuretic, were 35% to 75% less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease; the water pills also appeared to reverse signs of Alzheimer's in mouse and cell experiments. (Nature Aging) Triptans produced better migraine relief but had more side effects than newer migraine drugs, a network meta-analysis showed. (JAMA Network Open) Takeda sto...

Oct 11th, 2021 - Long-duration spaceflight was linked to changes in blood biomarkers of brain injury and degeneration, an international team of scientists said. Blood values of five cosmonauts who spent an average of 169 days on the International Space Station showed alterations in neurofilament light chain (NfL), glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), tau, and amyloid-beta, reported Peter zu Eulenburg, MD, Ph...

Oct 7th, 2021 - Neuroscientist Nadia Chaudhri, PhD, of Concordia University in Montreal, died at age 43 on Tuesday after battling terminal ovarian cancer. Throughout her life, Chaudhri was committed to supporting young neuroscientists, especially those who faced social, cultural, and other barriers. "Nadia is passionate about identifying students who don't fit the traditional mold of what a neuroscientist shou...

Oct 6th, 2021 - Gene replacement therapy with onasemnogene abeparvovec (Zolgensma) enabled symptomatic infants with spinal muscular atrophy type 1 (SMA1) to achieve at least one episode of independent sitting, the open-label phase III STR1VE-EU trial showed. Fourteen of 32 patients met the primary endpoint of achieving independent sitting for at least 10 seconds by age 18 months, reported Eugenio Mercuri, MD, ...

Oct 5th, 2021 - Tic-like behaviors after viewing certain TikTok, YouTube, and other social media videos differ from tics in Tourette's syndrome and may represent a socially driven functional movement disorder. (Movement Disorders) People diagnosed with high blood pressure at ages 35-44 had smaller total brain volume and were more likely to develop dementia than people with normal blood pressure. (Hypertension)...

Oct 4th, 2021 - Long-term use of enzyme-inducing antiseizure medications (ASMs) were linked to a higher risk of incident cardiovascular disease in people with epilepsy, a longitudinal population-based study in England showed. Adult epilepsy patients who received four consecutive enzyme-inducing ASMs after 1990 -- when new non-enzyme-inducing antiseizure drugs started entering the market -- were 21% more likely...

Sep 29th, 2021 - Atogepant (Qulipta) became the first oral calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) receptor antagonist (gepant) specifically developed for migraine prevention to win FDA approval, AbbVie announced Monday. The drug earned a nod for prevention of episodic migraine in adults and became the second gepant approved for migraine prevention. The first, rimegepant (Nurtec ODT), originally was approved to ...

Sep 28th, 2021 - One in five people with Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) had a preceding SARS-CoV-2 infection, but whether COVID-19 increased GBS risk wasn't clear. (Brain) The MIND diet was linked to better cognitive functioning in older adults with brain pathology, suggesting it may promote cognitive resilience. (Journal of Alzheimer's Disease) Plasma assays using certain mass spectrometry methods performed bet...

Sep 28th, 2021 - The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued a public safety alert on Monday warning of an "alarming increase" in lethal counterfeit pills containing fentanyl or methamphetamine. The alert, the DEA's first in 6 years, aimed to raise awareness of a significant surge in fake pills mass-produced by criminal drug networks and marketed as legitimate prescription pills. "The United States is faci...

Sep 27th, 2021 - The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) recommended that neurologists and other neuroscience professionals have an explicit, systematic awareness of issues and ethics about using social media in medicine. The new position statement, from the AAN's Ethics, Law, and Humanities Committee, spans everything from tweeting about research to online harassment, and addresses patient education as well as...

Sep 27th, 2021 - Treatment with methylphenidate (Ritalin), a stimulant approved for attention deficit-hyperactivity disorders (ADHD) and narcolepsy, led to a small to medium reduction in apathy in people with Alzheimer's disease, the phase III ADMET 2 trial showed. At 6 months, methylphenidate 10 mg twice daily led to a larger decrease on the 12-point Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) apathy scale compared with ...

Sep 24th, 2021 - Multiple sclerosis (MS) patients treated with cladribine (Mavenclad) or teriflunomide (Aubagio) had appropriate humoral response against SARS-CoV-2 a month after vaccination, but those treated with anti-CD20 therapies or sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor (S1P) modulators did not, a Swiss study showed. Of 120 MS patients at the Neurocenter of Southern Switzerland who received either the Moderna o...

Sep 22nd, 2021 - Sleep quality was impaired and sleep architecture was altered in people with migraine, a meta-analysis showed. Adults with migraine had worse subjective sleep quality scores than healthy controls, reported Jan Hoffmann, MD, PhD, of King's College London, and colleagues. Adult and pediatric migraine patients had a lower percentage of REM sleep than controls in polysomnography studies, they repor...

Sep 21st, 2021 - Elevated levels of HDL and apolipoprotein A1 were linked to a lower risk of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), U.K. Biobank data showed. (Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, & Psychiatry) Also from the U.K. Biobank cohort: age-related macular degeneration, cataracts, and diabetes-related eye disease were tied to a heightened risk of dementia. (British Journal of Ophthalmology) Amyloid produce...

Sep 20th, 2021 - Clear symptoms of Alzheimer's dementia in cognitively normal people were strongly tied to an amyloid accumulation tipping point, researchers reported. The tipping point was identified at a standardized uptake value ratio (SUVR) of 1.2 on Pittsburgh compound B PET. After that point, amyloid levels increased at a relatively consistent rate until reaching a high amyloid burden (SUVR 3.0), said Suz...

Sep 17th, 2021 - A young woman was diagnosed with acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) after being vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, neurologists in Europe said. The case report involved a 19-year-old woman admitted to the hospital 2 weeks after receiving her first dose of the Moderna mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, reported Karolina Kania, MD, of Poznan University of Medical Sciences in Poland, and co-authors, in...

Sep 14th, 2021 - Treatment with the urate precursor inosine did not result in a significant difference in the rate of clinical disease progression in early Parkinson's disease, the phase III SURE-PD3 trial showed. Clinical progression rates, measured by the Movement Disorder Society Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS) parts I-III, were not significantly different between Parkinson's patients rand...