Dementia

BACKGROUND: The optimum approach to enhance the understanding toward dementia is to experience how patients feel as they experience the manifestations of the disease. The application of virtual reality (VR) and relevant innovative technologies for developing caregiver training programs allows caregivers to better understand dementia and empathize with patients. OBJECTIVES: To develop a VR-based experiential training course on individualized care for the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD)...

Brains are highly metabolically active organs, consuming 20% of a person's energy at resting state. A decline in glucose metabolism is a common feature across a number of neurodegenerative diseases. Another common feature is the progressive accumulation of insoluble protein deposits, it's unclear if the two are linked. Glucose metabolism in the brain is highly coupled between neurons and glia, with glucose taken up by glia and metabolised to lactate, which is then shuttled via transporters to neurons, where it is converted back to pyruvate and fed into the TCA cycle for ATP production...

Two multidimensional problems of recent times - Alzheimer's disease and light pollution - seem to be more interrelated than previously expected. A series of studies in years explore the pathogenesis and the course of Alzheimer's disease, yet the mechanisms underlying this pathology remain not fully discovered and understood. Artificial lights which accompany civilization on a daily basis appear to have more detrimental effects on both environment and human health than previously anticipated. Circadian rhythm is affected by inappropriate lighting conditions in particular...

Neurodegenerative dementia can result from multiple underlying abnormalities, including neurotransmitter imbalances, protein aggregation, and other neurotoxic events. A major complication in identifying effective treatment targets is the frequent co-occurrence of multiple neurodegenerative processes, occurring either in parallel or sequentially. The path towards developing effective treatments for Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other dementias has been relatively slow and until recently has focused on disease symptoms...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: To provide an overview of the association between angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB) use and cognitive outcomes. RECENT FINDINGS: ARBs have previously shown greater neuroprotection compared to other anti-hypertensive classes. The benefits are primarily attributed to the ARB's effect on modulating the renin-angiotensin system via inhibiting the Ang II/AT1R pathway and activating the Ang II/AT2R, Ang IV/AT4R, and Ang-(1-7)/MasR pathways. These interactions are associated with pleiotropic neurocognitive benefits, including reduced β-amyloid accumulation and abnormal hyperphosphorylation of tau, ameliorated brain hypo-fusion, reduced neuroinflammation and synaptic dysfunction, better neurotoxin clearing, and blood-brain barrier function restoration...

Vascular dementia (VaD), a cognitive impairment resulting from cerebrovascular issues, could be mitigated by Epimedium. This study investigates Epimedium's efficacy in VaD management through a systematic review, network pharmacology, molecular docking, and molecular dynamic simulations (MDS). Comprehensive literature searches were conducted across various databases. Epimedium's pharmacological properties were analyzed using the TCMSP database. Integration with the Aging Atlas database enabled the identification of shared targets between Epimedium and VaD...

BACKGROUND: There is ample evidence in animal models that lithium increases Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) with supporting evidence in human studies. Little is known, however, about the effects of lithium on BDNF in Alzheimer's Dementia (AD). In one study of patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment, serum BDNF increased after treatment with lithium. These patients also showed mild improvement in cognitive function. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate low-dose lithium treatment of agitation in Alzheimer's disease (AD)...

BACKGROUND: The Mild Behavioral Impairment Checklist (MBI-C) was developed to assess neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) and to identify mild behavioral impairment (MBI). This study validated the Taiwanese version of the MBI-C and examined its association of health-related quality of life (HR-QoL). METHODS: We recruited 242 older individuals without dementia (129 amnestic mild cognitive impairment, 113 cognitively normal). Their family completed the MBI-C, the Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire (NPI-Q), and instrumental activities of daily living scale...

Dementia affects almost 50 million adults worldwide, and remains a major cause of death and disability. Hypertension is a leading risk factor for dementia, including Alzheimer disease and Alzheimer disease-related dementias. Although this association is well-established, the mechanisms underlying hypertension-induced cognitive decline remain poorly understood. By exploring the mechanisms mediating the detrimental effects of hypertension on the brain, studies have aimed to provide therapeutic insights and strategies on how to protect the brain from the effects of blood pressure elevation...

There has been considerable progress in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease, reducing the population burden of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Recently, some randomized trials, including the SPRINT (Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial), have suggested that improvements in cardiovascular risk factors may also slow cognitive decline and reduce the eventual development of dementia. Unfortunately, the randomized trial template that has been used repeatedly to successfully demonstrate reductions in major adverse cardiac events faces several design and analytic obstacles when applied in the context of cognitive decline and dementia...

Cerebral small vessel disease is common in older adults and increases the risk of stroke, cognitive impairment, and dementia. While often attributed to midlife vascular risk factors such as hypertension, factors from earlier in life may contribute to later small vessel disease risk. In this review, we summarize current evidence for early-life effects on small vessel disease, stroke and dementia focusing on prenatal nutrition, and cognitive ability, education, and socioeconomic status in childhood. We discuss possible reasons for these associations, including differences in brain resilience and reserve, access to cognitive, social, and economic resources, and health behaviors, and we consider the extent to which these associations are independent of vascular risk factors...

Biological aging is the correlated decline of multi-organ system integrity central to the etiology of many age-related diseases. A novel epigenetic measure of biological aging, DunedinPACE, is associated with cognitive dysfunction, incident dementia, and mortality. Here, we tested for associations between DunedinPACE and structural MRI phenotypes in three datasets spanning midlife to advanced age: the Dunedin Study (age=45 years), the Framingham Heart Study Offspring Cohort (mean age=63 years), and the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (mean age=75 years)...

INTRODUCTION: Depressive symptoms are associated with higher risk of dementia but how they impact cognition in diverse populations is unclear. METHODS: Asian, Black, LatinX, or White participants (n=2,227) in the Kaiser Healthy Aging and Diverse Life Experiences (age 65+) and the Study of Healthy Aging in African Americans (age 50+) underwent up to three waves of cognitive assessments over four years. Multilevel models stratified by race/ethnicity were used to examine whether depressive symptoms were associated with cognition or cognitive decline and whether associations differed by race/ethnicity...

In the United States, non-Hispanic Black (19%) older adults are more likely to develop dementia than White older adults (10%). As genetics alone cannot account for these differences, the impact of historical social factors is considered. This study examined whether childhood and late-life psychological distress associated with dementia risk could explain part of these disparities. Using longitudinal data from 379 White and 141 Black respondents from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we assessed the association between childhood bullying and late-life dementia risk, testing for mediation effects from late-life psychological distress...

BACKGROUND: The United Kingdom (UK) has used date of birth-based eligibility rules for live-attenuated herpes zoster (HZ) vaccination that have led to large differences in HZ vaccination coverage between individuals who differed in their age by merely a few days. Using this unique natural randomization, we have recently provided evidence from Welsh electronic health record data that HZ vaccination caused a reduction in new dementia diagnoses over a seven-year period. Based on this, we hypothesized that HZ vaccination may have slowed the dementia disease process more generally and, thus, already reduced deaths with dementia as their underlying cause even though the UK's HZ vaccination program commenced as recently as September 2013...

RNA-binding proteins with prion-like domains, such as FUS and TDP-43, condense into functional liquids, which can transform into pathological fibrils that underpin fatal neurodegenerative disorders, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)/frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Here, we define short RNAs (24-48 nucleotides) that prevent FUS fibrillization by promoting liquid phases, and distinct short RNAs that prevent and, remarkably, reverse FUS condensation and fibrillization. These activities require interactions with multiple RNA-binding domains of FUS and are encoded by RNA sequence, length, and structure...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

INTRODUCTION: Excess body weight and Alzheimer's disease (AD) disproportionately affect older African Americans. While mid-life obesity increases risk for AD, few data exist on the relationship between late-life obesity and AD, or how obesity-based and genetic risk for AD interact. Although the APOE-ε4 allele confers a strong genetic risk for AD, it is unclear if late-life obesity poses a greater risk for APOE-ε4 carriers compared to non-carriers. Here we assessed: (1) the influence of body mass index (BMI) (normal; overweight; class 1 obese; ≥ class 2 obese) on cognitive and structural MRI measures of AD risk; and (2) the interaction between BMI and APOE-ε4 in older African Americans...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.