Plos One
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Comparative Study
Comparison of brief cognitive tests and CSF biomarkers in predicting Alzheimer's disease in mild cognitive impairment: six-year follow-up study.
Early identification of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is needed both for clinical trials and in clinical practice. In this study, we compared brief cognitive tests and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers in predicting conversion from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to AD. ⋯ The MMSE and the clock drawing test were as accurate as CSF biomarkers in predicting future development of AD in patients with MCI. Combining both instruments provided significantly greater accuracy than cognitive tests or CSF biomarkers alone in predicting AD.
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China has the huge map and the largest population in the world. Previous studies on the prevalence and classification of headaches were conducted based on the general population, however, similar studies among the Chinese outpatient population are scarce. This study aimed to analyze the characteristics of 1843 headache patients enrolled in a North China headache clinic of the General Hospital for Chinese People's Liberation Army from October 2011 to May 2012, with the International Classification of Headache Disorders, 2nd Edition (ICHD-II). ⋯ This study revealed the characteristics of the headache clinic outpatients in a tertiary hospital of North China that migraine is the most common diagnosis. Furthermore, most headaches in this patient population can be classified using ICHD-II criteria.
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Recent Alzheimer's disease (AD) research has focused on finding biomarkers to identify disease at the pre-clinical stage of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), allowing treatment to be initiated before irreversible damage occurs. Many studies have examined brain imaging or cerebrospinal fluid but there is also growing interest in blood biomarkers. The Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) has generated data on 190 plasma analytes in 566 individuals with MCI, AD or normal cognition. We conducted independent analyses of this dataset to identify plasma protein signatures predicting pre-clinical AD. ⋯ Applying these novel analysis approaches to the powerful and well-characterized ADNI dataset has identified sets of plasma biomarkers for pre-clinical AD. While studies of independent test sets are required to validate the signatures, these analyses provide a starting point for developing a cost-effective and minimally invasive test capable of diagnosing AD in its pre-clinical stages.
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Inflammasomes are multi-protein complexes that control the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-1β. Inflammasomes play an important role in the control of immunity to tumors and infections, and also in autoimmune diseases, but the mechanisms controlling the activation of human inflammasomes are largely unknown. We found that human activated CD4+CD45RO+ memory T-cells specifically suppress P2X7R-mediated NLRP3 inflammasome activation, without affecting P2X7R-independent NLRP3 or NLRP1 inflammasome activation. ⋯ The inhibition of pro-IL-1β production and suppression of NLRP3 inflammasome activation by IFNβ-primed human CD4+CD45RO+ memory T-cells is partly mediated by soluble FasL and is associated with down-regulated P2X7R mRNA expression and reduced response to ATP in monocytes. CD4+CD45RO+ memory T-cells from multiple sclerosis (MS) patients showed a reduced ability to suppress NLRP3 inflammasome activation, however their suppressive ability was recovered following in vivo treatment with IFNβ. Thus, our data demonstrate that human P2X7R-mediated NLRP3 inflammasome activation is regulated by activated CD4+CD45RO+ memory T cells, and provide new information on the mechanisms mediating the therapeutic effects of IFNβ in MS.
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The precise neural mechanisms underlying speech sound representations are still a matter of debate. Proponents of 'sparse representations' assume that on the level of speech sounds, only contrastive or otherwise not predictable information is stored in long-term memory. Here, in a passive oddball paradigm, we challenge the neural foundations of such a 'sparse' representation; we use words that differ only in their penultimate consonant ("coronal" [t] vs. "dorsal" [k] place of articulation) and for example distinguish between the German nouns Latz ([lats]; bib) and Lachs ([laks]; salmon). ⋯ Source localization showed this difference to be due to enhanced brain activity in right superior temporal cortex. These findings reflect a difference in phonological 'sparsity': Coronal [t] segments, but not dorsal [k] segments, are based on more sparse representations and elicit less specific neural predictions; sensory deviations from this prediction are more readily 'tolerated' and accordingly trigger weaker MMNs. The results foster the neurocomputational reality of 'representationally sparse' models of speech perception that are compatible with more general predictive mechanisms in auditory perception.