Objectives: Higher-educated patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) can harbor greater neuropathologic burden than those with less education despite similar symptom severity. In this study, we assessed whether this observation is also present in potential preclinical AD stages, namely in individuals with subjective cognitive decline and clinical features increasing AD likelihood (SCD+).
Methods: Amyloid-PET information ([F]Flutemetamol or [F]Florbetaben) of individuals with SCD+, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and AD were retrieved from the AMYPAD-DPMS cohort, a multicenter randomized controlled study.
The possibility of flexibly retrieving our memories using a first-person or a third-person perspective (1PP or 3PP) has been extensively investigated in episodic memory research. Here, we used a Virtual Reality-based paradigm to manipulate the visual perspective used during the encoding stage to investigate age-related differences in the formation of memories experienced from 1PP vs. 3PP.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) allows the direct assessment of amyloid deposition, one of the main hallmarks of Alzheimer disease. However, this technique is currently not widely reimbursed because of the lack of appropriately designed studies demonstrating its clinical effect.
Objective: To assess the clinical effect of amyloid PET in memory clinic patients.
Importance: Individuals who are amyloid-positive with subjective cognitive decline and clinical features increasing the likelihood of preclinical Alzheimer disease (SCD+) are at higher risk of developing dementia. Some individuals with SCD+ undergo amyloid-positron emission tomography (PET) as part of research studies and frequently wish to know their amyloid status; however, the disclosure of a positive amyloid-PET result might have psychological risks.
Objective: To assess the psychological outcomes of the amyloid-PET result disclosure in individuals with SCD+ and explore which variables are associated with a safer disclosure in individuals who are amyloid positive.
Introduction: AMYPAD Diagnostic and Patient Management Study (DPMS) aims to investigate the clinical utility and cost-effectiveness of amyloid-PET in Europe. Here we present participants' baseline features and discuss the representativeness of the cohort.
Methods: Participants with subjective cognitive decline plus (SCD+), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), or dementia were recruited in eight European memory clinics from April 16, 2018, to October 30, 2020, and randomized into three arms: ARM1, early amyloid-PET; ARM2, late amyloid-PET; and ARM3, free-choice.
The Memory Centres of several Swiss hospitals have set up a national online registry for Alzheimer's research, called www.BHR-suisse.org.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDementia has a devastating impact on the quality of life of patients and families and comes with a huge cost to society. Dementia prevention is considered a public health priority by the World Health Organization. Delaying the onset of dementia by treating associated risk factors will bring huge individual and societal benefit.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCognitive complaints in the absence of objective cognitive impairment, observed in patients with subjective cognitive decline (SCD), are common in old age. The first step to postpone cognitive decline is to use techniques known to improve cognition, i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is evidence that gray matter networks are disrupted in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and associated with cognitive impairment and faster disease progression. However, it remains unknown how these alterations are related to the presence of Apolipoprotein E isoform E4 (ApoE4), the most prominent genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD). To investigate this topic at the individual level, we explore the impact of ApoE4 and the disease progression on the Single-Subject Gray Matter Networks (SSGMNets) using the graph theory approach.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Harmonized neuropsychological assessment for neurocognitive disorders, an international priority for valid and reliable diagnostic procedures, has been achieved only in specific countries or research contexts.
Methods: To harmonize the assessment of mild cognitive impairment in Europe, a workshop (Geneva, May 2018) convened stakeholders, methodologists, academic, and non-academic clinicians and experts from European, US, and Australian harmonization initiatives.
Results: With formal presentations and thematic working-groups we defined a standard battery consistent with the U.
In the absence of any neuropsychiatric condition, older adults may show declining performance in several cognitive processes and among them, in retrieving and producing words, reflected in slower responses and even reduced accuracy compared to younger adults. To overcome this difficulty, healthy older adults implement compensatory strategies, which are the focus of this paper. We provide a review of mainstream findings on deficient mechanisms and possible neurocognitive strategies used by older adults to overcome the deleterious effects of age on lexical production.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCognitive impairment can interfere with the fitness to drive. An increase in requests to assess this aspect is observed at Leenaards Memory Centre. Changes in the law could be an explanatory factor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Apolipoprotein E isoform E4 (ApoE4) is consistently associated with an elevated risk of developing late-onset Alzheimer's Disease (AD); however, less is known about the potential genetic modulation of the brain networks organization during prodromal stages like Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). To investigate this issue during this critical stage, we used a dataset with a cross-sectional sample of 253 MCI patients divided into ApoE4-positive (‛Carriers') and ApoE4-negative ('non-Carriers'). We estimated the cortical thickness (CT) from high-resolution T1-weighted structural magnetic images to calculate the correlation among anatomical regions across subjects and build the CT covariance networks (CT-Nets).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith the shift of research focus to personalized medicine in Alzheimer's Dementia (AD), there is an urgent need for tools that are capable of quantifying a patient's risk using diagnostic biomarkers. The Medical Informatics Platform (MIP) is a distributed e-infrastructure federating large amounts of data coupled with machine-learning (ML) algorithms and statistical models to define the biological signature of the disease. The present study assessed (i) the accuracy of two ML algorithms, i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Clin Exp Neuropsychol
September 2020
Several studies have shown that people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) tend to use more pronouns than healthy aged adults when referring to entities during discourse. This referential behavior has been associated with the decrease of cognitive abilities, such as lexical retrieval difficulties or reduced abilities in working memory. However, the influence of certain important discourse factors on the referential choices made by people with AD has yet to be established.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBaby-boomers might be more health-conscious than earlier birth cohorts, but limited evidence has been produced so far. To investigate such changes, this study compared health-related behaviors at age 65 to 70 among three successive five-year birth cohorts (pre-war: born 1934-1938; war: born 1939-1943 and baby-boom: born 1944-1948) representative of the community-dwelling population. Information about alcohol use, smoking, physical activity, and nutrition was compared across the three cohorts ( = 4,270 participants) using Chi-squared test.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci
November 2020
Over the past few decades, several radiotracers have been developed for neuroimaging applications, especially in PET. Because of their low steric hindrance, PET radionuclides can be used to label molecules that are small enough to cross the blood brain barrier, without modifying their biological properties. As the use of 11C is limited by its short physical half-life (20 min), there has been an increasing focus on developing tracers labeled with 18F for clinical use.
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