Braz J Psychiatry
August 2022
Objective: Positron emission tomography (PET) allows in vivo evaluation of molecular targets in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease. Mild cognitive impairment is an intermediate stage between normal cognition and Alzheimer-type dementia. In vivo fibrillar amyloid-beta can be detected in PET using [11C]-labeled Pittsburgh compound B (11C-PiB).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Approximately 10% of adolescents worldwide are overweight or obese, hence the urgent and universal need to elucidate possible mechanisms that lead to obesity in the adolescent population.
Objectives: We examined the hypothalamic metabolism and its relationship with physical development in obese and eutrophic adolescents.
Methods: We performed a case-control study with 115 adolescents between 11 and 18 years of age, to compare obese (BMI z-score ≥ 2) and nonobese individuals (eutrophic controls; BMI z-score ≤ 1).
Brain Cogn
August 2021
The short-term memory binding (STMB) test involves the ability to hold in memory the integration between surface features, such as shapes and colours. The STMB test has been used to detect Alzheimer's disease (AD) at different stages, from preclinical to dementia, showing promising results. The objective of the present study was to verify whether the STMB test could differentiate patients with distinct biomarker profiles in the AD continuum.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlzheimers Dement (Amst)
December 2020
Introduction: Reduced cognitive reserve (CR) due to very low educational (VLE) levels may influence high dementia rates in low-middle income environments, leading to decreased cognitive resilience (RES) to Alzheimer´s disease (AD) pathology. However, findings in VLE groups confirming this prediction are lacking.
Methods: Cognitively impaired patients (with clinically defined AD dementia or amnestic mild cognitive impairment) and cognitively unimpaired older adults (n = 126) were recruited for a positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) investigation in Brazil, including 37 VLE individuals (≤5 years of education).
J Neurosci Res
February 2021
Changes in hippocampal subfield volumes (HSV) along the Alzheimer's disease (AD) continuum have been scarcely investigated to date in elderly subjects classified based on the presence of β-amyloid aggregation and signs of neurodegeneration. We classified patients (either sex) with mild dementia compatible with AD (n = 35) or amnestic mild cognitive impairment (n = 39), and cognitively unimpaired subjects (either sex; n = 26) using [ C]PIB-PET to assess β-amyloid aggregation (A+) and [ F]FDG-PET to account for neurodegeneration ((N)+). Magnetic resonance imaging-based automated methods were used for HSV and white matter hyperintensity (WMH) measurements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Studies of elderly subjects using biomarkers that are proxies for Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology have the potential to document meaningful relationships between cognitive performance and biomarker changes along the AD continuum.
Objective: To document cognitive performance differences across distinct AD stages using a categorization based on the presence of PET-assessed amyloid-β (Aβ) burden and neurodegeneration.
Methods: Patients with mild dementia compatible with AD (n = 38) or amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI; n = 43) and a cognitively unimpaired group (n = 27) underwent PET with Pittsburgh compound-B (PiB) assessing Aβ aggregation (A+) and [18F]FDG-PET assessing neurodegeneration ((N)+).
Many previous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have documented sex differences in brain morphology, but the patterns of sexual brain differences in transgender women - male sex assigned at birth - with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria (TW) have been rarely investigated to date. We acquired T1-weighted MRI data for the following four (n = 80) groups: treatment-naïve TW (TNTW), TW treated with cross-sex hormones for at least one year (TTW), cisgender men, and cisgender women (cisgender individuals as controls). Differences in whole-brain and regional white matter volume and grey matter volume (GMV) were assessed using voxel-based morphometry.
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