Publications by authors named "Dede L Heng"
: Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, primarily affecting the middle-aged to elderly population. Among its nonmotor symptoms, cognitive decline (CD) is a precursor to dementia and represents a critical target for early risk assessment and diagnosis. Accurate CD prediction is crucial for timely intervention and tailored management of at-risk patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: COVID-19-related social restrictions provided an opportunity to evaluate the impact of social isolation on Parkinson's disease.
Objective: This study aimed to explore changes in social isolation and their associations with PD symptoms using the Lubben Social Network Scale-Revised (LSNS-R).
Methods: Data from 80 participants of the Early Parkinson's Disease Longitudinal Singapore cohort were collected from April 2019 to April 2023, covering the periods before and after the imposition of COVID-19 restrictions.
Article Synopsis
- The study aimed to analyze how motor, non-motor, and cognitive abilities progress in early-stage Parkinson's Disease (PD) patients, particularly those with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI).
- Researchers assessed 205 PD patients over five years, comparing those with MCI to those with normal cognition, using various scoring methods to evaluate disease progression.
- Results showed that PD-MCI patients experienced faster declines in motor functions and cognitive domains, particularly in visuospatial and perceptual abilities, highlighting the need for tailored management strategies for these patients.
Article Synopsis
- The study investigates data-driven subtypes of Parkinson's disease (PD) among Asian patients, focusing on how motor and non-motor symptoms progress over a 5-year period.
- Using various scales to measure symptom severity and cognitive function, researchers categorized 206 early PD patients into three clusters, with Cluster A (severe subtype) showing the fastest progression across various symptoms.
- The findings highlight the need for tailored intervention strategies for PD patients, especially those in the severe cluster, to manage symptoms such as mood, perceptual issues, and cognitive decline more effectively.
Article Synopsis
- This study investigates various factors linked to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in Parkinson's disease, using a method called Shapley variable importance cloud (ShapleyVIC) to analyze their significance collectively.
- Out of 41 examined variables, 22 were found to be important, and 8 were selected as key risk factors for PD-MCI, including education level, hypertension history, motor scores, triglyceride levels, and a specific genetic marker (SNCA rs6826785).
- The findings suggest that managing triglyceride and apolipoprotein A1 levels may help prevent cognitive impairment in early Parkinson’s patients, while the genetic marker could serve as a potential target for new treatments.
Article Synopsis
- Diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) can assess microstructural changes in brain tissue, potentially aiding in the management of early Parkinson's disease (PD).* -
- A study of 262 participants (185 with PD) found that baseline measurements showed higher mean kurtosis in specific brain regions associated with PD, and this increased further over two years while remaining stable in healthy controls.* -
- Despite these imaging changes indicating abnormal progression in PD, they did not correlate with the decline in motor function for the participants with PD.*
Background: Sleep disorders are common in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the longitudinal relationship between sleep quality and the other non-motor symptoms of PD has not been well characterized, especially in early PD.
Objective: To explore the value of baseline sleep quality in predicting the progression of other non-motor symptoms in early PD.
Background: Neurofilament light is a marker of axonal degeneration, whose measurement from peripheral blood was recently made possible by new assays.
Objective: We aimed to determine whether plasma neurofilament light chain (NfL) concentration reflects brain white matter integrity in patients with early Parkinson's disease (PD).
Methods: 137 early PD patients and 51 healthy controls were included.
Biomarker characterization of clinical subtypes of Parkinson Disease.
NPJ Parkinsons Dis
August 2022
Article Synopsis
- A study aimed at identifying clinical subtypes of Parkinson Disease (PD) in an Asian cohort, involving 206 patients, explored the relationship between clinical assessments, genetics, and blood markers.
- Using hierarchical clustering, three distinct PD subtypes were identified: cluster A (severe), cluster B (intermediate), and cluster C (mild), which differed in motor and cognitive symptoms as well as genetic markers.
- The severe subtype (cluster A) showed lower frequencies of certain genetic alleles and higher levels of homocysteine and C-reactive protein, suggesting these biomarkers could help in further stratifying PD subtypes and recognizing more severe cases.
Background: Lipid biomarkers have potential neuroprotective effects in Parkinson's disease (PD) and there is limited evidence in the field.
Objective: This study aims to investigate the association between comprehensive blood lipid biomarkers and PD.
Methods: A total of 205 PD patients and 102 non-PD subjects were included from Early Parkinson's disease Longitudinal Singapore (PALS) cohort.
Mammary gland homeostasis is maintained by adult tissue stem-progenitor cells residing within the luminal and basal epithelia. Dysregulation of mammary stem cells is a key mechanism for cancer development. However, stem cell characterization is challenging because reporter models using cell-specific promoters do not fully recapitulate the mammary stem cell populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVarious classifications have been proposed to subtype Parkinson's disease (PD) based on their motor phenotypes. However, the stability of these subtypes has not been properly evaluated. The goal of this study was to understand the distribution of PD motor subtypes, their stability over time, and baseline factors that predicted subtype stability.
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- This study explored how physical activity impacts motor, non-motor outcomes, and quality of life in early-stage Parkinson's disease (PD) participants.
- Researchers followed 121 PD participants using the Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly (PASE) to track changes in symptoms and quality of life over a year.
- Findings showed that higher physical activity levels at the start were linked to better motor function, cognitive performance, and reduced anxiety and apathy after one year.
Objective: Tissue stem cells are central regulators of organ homoeostasis. We looked for a protein that is exclusively expressed and functionally involved in stem cell activity in rapidly proliferating isthmus stem cells in the stomach corpus.
Design: We uncovered the specific expression of Iqgap3 in proliferating isthmus stem cells through immunofluorescence and in situ hybridisation.
Article Synopsis
- Subjective cognitive complaints (SCC) and affective symptoms are common in early Parkinson's Disease (PD), with a prevalence of 38.8% found in a study of 121 participants.
- The study used well-defined criteria to assess cognitive impairment and various scales to measure anxiety, depression, and apathy, revealing significant associations primarily in cognitively normal participants.
- The findings suggest that SCC can indicate affective disorders in those without cognitive impairment, while in cognitively impaired individuals, it may underestimate the prevalence of Mild Cognitive Impairment (PD-MCI).
Background & Aims: Little is known about the mechanisms of gastric carcinogenesis, partly because it has been a challenge to identify characterize gastric stem cells. Runx genes regulate development and their products are transcription factors associated with cancer development. A Runx1 enhancer element, eR1, is a marker of hematopoietic stem cells.
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