Publications by authors named "Emma Twait"

Background: Middle-aged and older adults presenting clinically relevant depressive symptoms are often undiagnosed. Understanding the determinants of late-life depressive symptoms could improve prognosis. Further, individuals with manifest cardiovascular disease (CVD) are at an increased risk of depression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Understanding the genetic basis of neuro-related proteins is essential for dissecting the molecular basis of human behavioural traits and the disease aetiology of neuropsychiatric disorders. Here the SCALLOP Consortium conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of over 12,000 individuals for 184 neuro-related proteins in human plasma. The analysis identified 125 cis-regulatory protein quantitative trait loci (cis-pQTL) and 164 trans-pQTL.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigated how age, education, and sex/gender relate to performance in semantic fluency, which is the ability to generate words within a certain category.
  • Data from 2,391 individuals across three different cohorts were analyzed, measuring factors like average cluster size and lexical decision response time in addition to the total number of words generated.
  • Results indicated that older age and being female were both linked to lower performance in word generation, while higher education correlated with better performance across various metrics, showing consistent trends across different cohorts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how health behaviors like smoking, physical inactivity, and alcohol use may mediate the relationship between depression, anxiety, and different types of cancer, including lung and breast cancer.
  • Utilizing data from 18 cohorts with a total of 319,613 participants, the researchers performed two-stage meta-analyses to analyze these associations and calculate the mediating effects.
  • Results showed that smoking and physical inactivity significantly mediated links between depression, anxiety, and lung cancer, highlighting the importance of smoking cessation programs for individuals dealing with mental health issues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Depressive symptoms are associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD). There has been a recent emergence in plasma biomarkers for AD pathophysiology, such as amyloid-beta (Aβ) and phosphorylated tau (p-tau), as well as for axonal damage (neurofilament light, NfL) and astrocytic activation (glial fibrillary acidic protein, GFAP). Hypothesizing that depressive symptoms may occur along the AD process, we investigated associations between plasma biomarkers of AD with depressive symptoms in individuals without dementia.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Two of the main causes for dementia are Alzheimer's disease (AD) and vascular pathology, with most patients showing mixed pathology. Plasma biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease-related pathology have recently emerged, including Aβ (amyloid-beta), p-tau (phosphorylated tau), NfL (neurofilament light), and GFAP (glial fibrillary acidic protein). There is a current gap in the literature regarding whether there is an association between these plasma biomarkers with vascular pathology and neurodegeneration.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the role of psychosocial factors, like depression and anxiety, in how health behaviors (such as smoking and alcohol use) influence cancer incidence.
  • Utilizing data from 437,827 participants and 22 cohorts, researchers performed meta-analyses to assess potential interactions between psychosocial factors and health behaviors across various types of cancer.
  • Results showed no significant interactions or clear patterns; the risk of cancer linked to health behaviors appeared consistent regardless of the presence of psychosocial stress.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Several lines of evidence have indicated that depression might be a prodromal symptom of Alzheimer's disease (AD). This systematic review and meta-analysis investigated the cross-sectional association between amyloid-beta, one of the key pathologies defining AD, and depression or depressive symptoms in older adults without dementia. A systematic search in PubMed yielded 689 peer-reviewed articles.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • This study examines how personal background factors, such as hobbies, might influence performance in a semantic fluency task focused on naming animals, highlighting the impact of specific animal class knowledge.
  • Researchers analyzed data from 736 Dutch adults, revealing that various levels of knowledge about animal classes correlated with participants’ background characteristics and cognitive abilities.
  • Findings indicate that individuals recalled higher numbers of specific animals were typically older, predominantly male, and often retired, and performed better on overall fluency tasks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Early identification of dementia is crucial for prompt intervention for high-risk individuals in the general population. External validation studies on prognostic models for dementia have highlighted the need for updated models. The use of machine learning in dementia prediction is in its infancy and may improve predictive performance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Depression and anxiety have been studied as potential risk factors for various types of cancer, but previous research has produced inconclusive results.
  • The PSY-CA consortium analyzed data from 18 cohorts, including over 319,000 participants, to investigate the relationship between these mental health conditions and cancer incidence using detailed statistical methods.
  • The findings revealed no significant links between depression or anxiety and most cancer types, although there was a slight association with lung and smoking-related cancers, which diminished after accounting for other risk factors like smoking and alcohol consumption.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia, characterized by the aggregation of amyloid-beta (Aβ) proteins into plaques. Individuals with AD frequently show mixed pathologies, often caused by cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD), resulting in lesions such as white matter hyperintensities (WMH). The current systematic review and meta-analysis investigated the cross-sectional relationship between amyloid burden and WMH in older adults without objective cognitive impairment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Understanding the genetic foundation of neuro-related proteins is vital for exploring human behavior and neuropsychiatric disorders.
  • The SCALLOP Consortium analyzed genetic data from over 12,500 individuals, identifying numerous cis- and trans-regulatory loci affecting neuro-related proteins.
  • Their findings also suggest potential causal relationships between these proteins and traits like sleep, smoking, mental health, and highlight new opportunities for drug repurposing and therapeutic targets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Understanding the genetic basis of neuro-related proteins is essential for dissecting the disease etiology of neuropsychiatric disorders and other complex traits and diseases. Here, the SCALLOP Consortium conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of over 12,500 individuals for 184 neuro-reiated proteins in human plasma. The analysis identified 117 cis-regulatory protein quantitative trait loci (cis-pQTL) and 166 trans-pQTL.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Specific subfields within the hippocampus have shown vulnerability to chronic stress, highlighting the importance of looking regionally within the hippocampus to understand the role of psychosocial factors in the development of neurodegenerative diseases. A systematic review on psychosocial factors and hippocampal subfield volumes was performed and showed inconsistent results, highlighting the need for future studies to explore this relationship. The current study aimed to explore the association of psychosocial factors with hippocampal (subfield) volumes, using high-field 7T MRI.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The current study aimed to assess if the relation between depression and dementia could be explained by allostatic load (AL) profiles, as well as assessing their risk on incident all-cause dementia, Alzheimer's disease (AD), and non-AD dementias.

Methods: The study included individuals without dementia at baseline from the population-based AGES-Reykjavik Study. Depressive symptoms assessed with the Geriatric Depression Scale-15 and AL markers were collected at baseline.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Late-life depression (LLD) is related to an increased risk of developing dementia; however, the biological mechanisms explaining this relationship remain unclear.

Objective: To determine whether the relationship between LLD and dementia can be best explained by the glucocorticoid cascade or vascular hypothesis.

Methods: Data are from 4,354 persons (mean age 76±5 years) without dementia at baseline from the AGES-Reykjavik Study.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Pathological tau is suggested to play a role in cognitive deterioration in the preclinical phase of Alzheimer's disease. We investigated cross-sectional associations of tau burden with episodic and semantic memory performance in older adults without dementia. A systematic search in MEDLINE (via PubMed), PsychINFO, and Embase resulted in 24 eligible studies for meta-analysis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Previous research suggests the presence of subtle semantic decline in early stages of Alzheimer's disease. This study investigated associations between amyloid burden, a biomarker for Alzheimer's disease, and tasks of semantic impairment in older individuals without dementia. A systematic search in MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Embase yielded 3691 peer-reviewed articles excluding duplicates.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aim: Shared reading leads to better language and executive functions. This study was designed to examine the effect of dialogic reading compared to screen-exposed intervention on executive functions using behavioural and electroencephalogram measures.

Methods: The effect of six weeks of dialogic reading intervention on executive functions was examined in 16 children (seven females, 61.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Reading is a complex cognitive ability, which relies on visual and language processing as well as on executive functions (EFs). Recent studies have demonstrated that increased reading ability in children aged 7-17 years is related to greater activation of cognitive control regions during verb generation, a task which merges linguistic and cognitive control ability. The aim of the current study is to determine the relationships between neural circuits specifically related to EF and reading ability.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dyslexia is a neurobiological learning disability, reflected through deficits in written (i.e. reading) but not in spoken language.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF