Inflammation markers correlate with common carotid intima-media thickness in patients perinatally infected with human immunodeficiency virus 1.

Objectives: To investigate common carotid intima-media thickness in a cohort of patients who were vertically infected with human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1).

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional observational study. Human immunodeficiency virus 1-infected patients were compared with age-, sex-, and body mass index-matched healthy participants.

Correlation between Doppler velocities and duplex ultrasound carotid cross-sectional percent stenosis.

Rationale And Objectives: Cross-sectional imaging is being increasingly proposed as a suitable tool to characterize carotid plaques. The aim of this work was to correlate the Doppler velocity parameters with the cross-sectional percent stenosis (CPoS) of internal carotid artery (ICA) and to identify the cutoff values of these parameters in five progressive classes of stenosis area severity (ie, 40%-49%, 50%-59%, 60%-69%, 70%-79%, 80%-90%).

Materials And Methods: High-quality scans from 90 patients (mean age, 74 ± 9 years) with 43%-90% ICA stenosis were analyzed.

Radionuclide brain imaging correlates of cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease (PD).

A subtle cognitive impairment can be detected early in the course of Parkinson's disease (PD). Executive, memory and visuospatial functions are specifically affected, but the underlying pathophysiological basis is not well elucidated yet and may be heterogeneous. The recent identification of a PD-related cognitive metabolic pattern (PDCP), including hypometabolism in associative frontal, parietal and posterior limbic structures, has integrated the classical notion of a striato-frontal syndrome at the basis of cognitive dys-function.

Unawareness of memory deficit in amnestic MCI: FDG-PET findings.

To unveil the brain metabolic correlates of (un)awareness of memory deficit in subjects with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), forty-two outpatients underwent brain 18F-FDG-PET. Awareness of memory deficit was assessed with the Memory Complaint Questionnaire (MAC-Q), identifying two groups: low (MCI/unaware; 17 patients) and good (MCI/aware; 25 patients) aMCI awareness. Twenty-nine age-matched healthy subjects represented the control group.

Impaired access to semantic memory for the cognition of geographic space in Alzheimer's disease.

This study explores the possibility to capitalize from a widely used semantic fluency test, in order to investigate aspects of topographical space representation, still poorly studied in neurodegenerative diseases. Twenty-six patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 13 healthy control (CTR) subjects underwent neuropsychological assessment at baseline (T0) and about 2 years later (T1). The cities named during category verbal fluency test ("names of cities") were marked on a map, and the polygon perimeter obtained by joining the external points was computed.

Preliminary experiments on the acceptability of animaloid companion robots by older people with early dementia.

Animaloid companion robots represent a very interesting paradigm. An increasing number of studies on this topic has been carried out in the past, involving such robots and older users affected by some kind of cognitive disease, from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to more severe stages of Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia. In the study described in this paper, an AIBO robotic dog was programmed and used to show simple reactive behaviors during the interaction with old adults.