Eye Movement Patterns Can Distinguish Schizophrenia From the Major Affective Disorders and Healthy Control Subjects.

Background And Hypothesis: No objective tests are currently available to help diagnosis of major psychiatric disorders. This study evaluates the potential of eye movement behavior patterns to predict schizophrenia subjects compared to those with major affective disorders and control groups.

Study Design: Eye movements were recorded from a training set of UK subjects with schizophrenia (SCZ;  = 120), bipolar affective disorder (BPAD;  = 141), major depressive disorder (MDD;  = 136), and healthy controls (CON;  = 142), and from a hold-out set of 133 individuals with proportional group sizes.

Cognitive Test Scores and Progressive Cognitive Decline in the Aberdeen 1921 and 1936 Birth Cohorts.

The Aberdeen birth cohorts of 1921 and 1936 (ABC21 and ABC36) were subjected to IQ tests in 1932 or 1947 when they were aged about 11y. They were recruited between 1997-2001 among cognitively healthy community residents and comprehensively phenotyped in a long-term study of brain aging and health up to 2017. Here, we report associations between baseline cognitive test scores and long-term cognitive outcomes.

Homocysteine, antioxidant micronutrients and late onset dementia.

Purpose: To distinguish between contributions to dementia made by homocysteine, folate, B12 and antioxidant micronutrients.

Methods: This is a follow-up study of a sample reported in 2002. Homocysteine was measured at baseline in 201 individuals born in 1921 and without dementia at age 77 years and followed up to age 88 years.

How the 1932 and 1947 mental surveys of Aberdeen schoolchildren provide a framework to explore the childhood origins of late onset disease and disability.

Objectives: To describe the discovery and development of the Aberdeen 1921 and 1936 birth cohort studies.

Study Design: The Aberdeen birth cohort studies were started in 1998 when the Scottish Mental Survey archives of the Scottish Council for Research in Education were re-discovered and permissions granted to follow-up survivors born in 1921 or 1936 and then aged about 77 or 64 years and who had entered (or were about to enter) the age of greatest risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Main Outcome Measures: Sources of attrition from the study, exposures to childhood adversity, nutritional, genetic and life style factors of possible relevance to extent of age-related cognitive decline and the timing of onset of dementia.

Brain volume and survival from age 78 to 85: the contribution of Alzheimer-type magnetic resonance imaging findings.

Objectives: To test the prediction of survival using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-derived global and regional brain volumes in subjects aged 78 to 79 without dementia.

Design: Observational follow-up study.

Setting: University teaching hospital.

Quality of life and its correlates in octogenarians. Use of the SEIQoL-DW in Wave 5 of the Aberdeen Birth Cohort 1921 Study (ABC1921).

Background: The direct-weighted Schedule for the Evaluation of Individual Quality of Life, Direct Weighting (SEIQoL-DW) is an individualised measure of QoL that has been little used in very elderly people.

Methods: We administered SEIQoL-DW during Wave 5 of the Aberdeen Birth Cohort 1921 Study (ABC1921) and sought statistical correlations with other variables in the data set. ABC1921 participants had been IQ-tested in 1932 at age 11.

Association study and meta-analysis of low-density lipoprotein receptor related protein in Alzheimer's disease.

Genome scans in sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD) have revealed a possible susceptibility locus on chromosome 12. The low density lipoprotein receptor related protein (LRP1) gene lies within this area of linkage. Eighteen previous AD case-control studies have investigated the C766T polymorphism in LRP1 with conflicting results, including a protective effect on AD of the T allele, an increased susceptibility towards AD with both the C and T alleles, or no association at all.

No association between polymorphisms in the lectin-like oxidised low density lipoprotein receptor (ORL1) gene on chromosome 12 and Alzheimer's disease in a UK cohort.

Genome scans in sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD) have revealed possible susceptibility loci on chromosome 12. Recently, two studies were published investigating the +1071 and +1073 polymorphisms in the lectin-like oxidised low density lipoprotein receptor (OLR1) gene with AD, a gene that lies within the area of chromosome 12 linkage. OLR1 is a good candidate gene, due to its function in lipid metabolism pathways, other components of which have been previously implicated as risk factors for AD.

Interleukin-6 promoter polymorphism: risk and pathology of Alzheimer's disease.

Inflammatory and immune responses are involved in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Interleukin-6 (IL-6), an inflammatory cytokine, is thought to play a role in neurodegeneration of the central nervous system and has been associated with increased amyloid precursor protein expression in vitro and greater cognitive decline. Previously a C-174G polymorphism in the promoter of IL-6, which influences expression in vitro, has been found associated in some studies but not all.

Candidate gene association studies of the alpha 4 (CHRNA4) and beta 2 (CHRNB2) neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subunit genes in Alzheimer's disease.

Consistent deficits in the cholinergic system are evident in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, including selective loss of alpha4beta2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the brains of AD patients. Knockout mice for the beta2 subunit have impaired neuronal survival in ageing. Accordingly, we have analysed polymorphisms in the genes that encode the alpha4 and beta2 subunits, CHRNA4 and CHRNB2 respectively, for genetic associations with late-onset AD.

Quality of Life in healthy old age: relationships with childhood IQ, minor psychological symptoms and optimism.

Background: The aim of this study was to examine relationships in old age between Quality of Life (QoL), childhood IQ, current cognitive performance and minor psychological symptoms, and to estimate possible contributions to these relationships made by sex, education, socioeconomic deprivation, current living group, sex, and balance and 6m walk time.

Methods: We conducted a follow-up study on 88 community residents without dementia who were survivors of the Aberdeen City 1921 birth cohort. QoL was measured by the Schedule for the Evaluation of Individual QoL-Direct Weighting (SEIQoL-DW), current cognition by MMSE and Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM), childhood IQ, minor psychological symptoms as assessed by the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), and optimism by the Life Orientation Test (LOT); we included balance, 6m walk time and demographic data.