Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association
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Hippocampal atrophy is a marker of disease state and progression in Alzheimer's disease. The gold standard to measure hippocampal volume is through manual segmentation. ⋯ With the aim of fostering the use of hippocampal volume in routine clinical settings, an international task force is currently working on developing a harmonized protocol that will resolve and reduce the present heterogeneity. The task force will then validate the harmonized protocol, develop harmonized probabilistic hippocampal maps, and develop illustrative and educational material on the use of the harmonized protocol and maps.
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Comparative Study
Healthy aging and preclinical dementia: the United States-Israel Longitudinal Database project.
This article proposes the establishment of a United States-Israel Longitudinal Database for Healthy Aging and Preclinical Dementia as a prototype model for the eventual creation of an international database. It is envisioned that such a comprehensive international database, as a shared research resource, will provide the foundation for a systems approach to solve the dual public health problems of: (1) Early detection of individuals at an elevated risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, and (2) Developing interventions to delay onset of, or prevent, chronic brain disorders later in life.
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Patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) demonstrate decline in everyday function. In this study, we investigated whether whole brain atrophy and apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype are associated with the rate of functional decline in MCI. ⋯ Functional decline occurs in MCI, particularly among patients who progress to mild AD. Brain atrophy and APOE varepsilon4 positivity are associated with such declines, and patients who have elevated brain atrophy and are APOE varepsilon4 positive are at greatest risk of functional degradation. These findings highlight the value of genetic and volumetric MRI information as predictors of functional decline, and thus disease progression, in MCI.
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Although numerous social factors have been associated with cognition in older adults, these findings have been limited by the consideration of individual factors in isolation. We investigated whether social vulnerability, defined as an index comprising many social factors, is associated with cognitive decline. ⋯ Increasing social vulnerability, defined by using a social vulnerability index incorporating many social factors, was associated with increased odds of cognitive decline during a period of 5 years in this study of older Canadians. Further study of social vulnerability in relation to cognition is warranted, with particular attention to potential interventions to alleviate its burden.