Biomarkers in Alzheimer's Disease: Are Olfactory Neuronal Precursors Useful for Biomarker Research?

Alzheimer's disease (AD), as the main cause of dementia, affects millions of people around the world, whose diagnosis is based mainly on clinical criteria. Unfortunately, the diagnosis is obtained very late, when the neurodegenerative damage is significant for most patients. Therefore, the exhaustive study of biomarkers is indispensable for diagnostic, prognostic, and even follow-up support.

[Use of antipsychotics in patients with dementia in Spain: Comparison with prescription of acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and memantine and analysis of associations].

Objective: We have analyzed the prevalence of antipsychotics in patients with dementia in Spain, their age distribution and the influence of treatment with IACEs and memantine on their prescription.

Method: Descriptive, retrospective and cross-sectional study of the 2017 BIFAP database in over 65 years of age with dementia. Prescriptions of antipsychotics, IACEs and memantine were collected.

Adherence to the Mediterranean diet and waist-to-hip ratio in middle-aged postmenopausal women are the main factors associated with semantic verbal fluency 12 years later.

Few studies have analized the effect of vascular risk factors and lifestyle habits affecting the middle age of postmenopausal women on later cognitive performance in old age. We have carried out an observational study to identify those factors and whether they differ from those acting in men. Postmenopausal women and males, both aged 40-60  years old at recruitment, from a community dwelling cohort were included.

[Prescription of acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and memantine in the Canary Islands, comparison with the Spanish population.].

Objective: In the Canary Islands the prescriptions billed to the National Health System are registered in a database (FarmaCanarias). The main objective was to estimate the consumption of Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (IACE) and Memantine in Canary Islands and to compare with a Spanish sample from Pharmacoepidemiological Research Base in Primary Care (PRBPC) which is national in scope. As secondary we determined the percentage in treatment in the Spanish sample.

A Real-Time Clinical Decision Support System, for Mild Cognitive Impairment Detection, Based on a Hybrid Neural Architecture.

Clinical procedure for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is mainly based on clinical records and short cognitive tests. However, low suspicion and difficulties in understanding test cut-offs make diagnostic accuracy being low, particularly in primary care. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are suitable to design computed aided diagnostic systems because of their features of generating relationships between variables and their learning capability.

Expanding the phenotypic and molecular spectrum of RNA polymerase III-related leukodystrophy.

Objective: To expand the phenotypic spectrum of severity of POLR3-related leukodystrophy and identify genotype-phenotype correlations through study of patients with extremely severe phenotypes.

Methods: We performed an international cross-sectional study on patients with genetically proven POLR3-related leukodystrophy and atypical phenotypes to identify 6 children, 3 males and 3 females, with an extremely severe phenotype compared with that typically reported. Clinical, radiologic, and molecular features were evaluated for all patients, and functional and neuropathologic studies were performed on 1 patient.