Impact of a national dementia research consortium: The Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA).

The Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) was created by the Canadian federal government through its health research funding agency, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), in 2014, as a response to the G7 initiative to fight dementia. Two five-year funding cycles (2014-2019; 2019-2024) have occurred following peer review, and a third cycle (Phase 3) has just begun. A unique construct was mandated, consisting of 20 national teams in Phase I and 19 teams in Phase II (with research topics spanning from basic to clinical science to health resource systems) along with cross-cutting programs to support them.

Depression detection in dementia: A diagnostic accuracy systematic review and meta analysis update.

Background: Depression is common in persons with dementia and is often under-detected and under-treated. It is critical to understand which available tools accurately detect depression in the context of dementia.

Methods: We updated our systematic review completed in 2015.

Quality indicators for schizophrenia care: A scoping review.

Measuring quality of care is a critical first step towards improving the healthcare contributing to persistent poor outcomes experienced by many people living with schizophrenia. This scoping review aims to identify and characterize indicators for measuring the quality of care for people living with schizophrenia. We searched 6 academic databases, 4 grey literature databases, and 23 organization websites for documents containing quality indicators developed for or applied in a population with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders.

Psychosis detection in dementia: a systematic review of diagnostic test accuracy studies.

Introduction: Symptoms of psychosis, characterized by delusions and hallucinations, are commonly experienced by persons living with dementia. A systematic review was completed to identify tools to evaluate symptoms of psychosis compared to a reference standard in persons with dementia. Articles reporting correlation values between psychosis tools were also identified.

Optimizing Older Adult Mental Health in Support of Healthy Ageing: A Pluralistic Framework to Inform Transformative Change across Community and Healthcare Domains.

This paper describes a pluralistic framework to inform transformative change across community and healthcare domains to optimize the mental health of older adults in support of healthy ageing. An extensive review and analysis of the literature informed the creation of a framework that contextualizes the priority areas of the WHO Decade of Health Ageing (ageism, age-friendly environments, long-term care, and integrated care) with respect to older adult mental health. The framework additionally identifies barriers, facilitators, and strategies for action at macro (social/system), meso (services/supports), and micro (older adults) levels of influence.

Hyponatremia-associated hospital visits are not reduced by early electrolyte testing in older adults starting antidepressants.

Background: Clinical practice guidelines recommend early serum electrolyte monitoring when starting antidepressants in older adults due to the increased risk of hyponatremia. It is unclear whether this monitoring improves outcomes.

Methods: Population-based, retrospective cohort study of Ontario adults aged ≥66 years who initiated therapy with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) or selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI) between April 1, 2013, and January 31, 2020.

Evaluating the impact of a national geriatric mental health ECHO educational program on healthcare providers' practice.

Project Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) enables healthcare providers to share knowledge and best practices via telementoring. The ECHO model builds provider capacity and improves care for patients with a variety of health conditions. This study describes a Canada-wide National ECHO pilot project in the area of geriatric mental health and reports on the program's impact on providers' care practices.

Guideline Recommendations on Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia: A Systematic Review.

Objective: To synthesize recommendations on assessing and managing behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSDs) in existing clinical practice guidelines on dementia care to learn from and adapt recommendations to a Canadian context and language for describing BPSDs.

Design: Systematic review.

Setting And Participants: Moderate to high-quality clinical practice guidelines on dementia care that made 1 or more recommendations on BPSD assessment or management.

Sex-specific neuropsychological correlates of apathy and depression across neurodegenerative disorders.

Background: Apathy and depression are common neuropsychiatric symptoms across neurodegenerative disorders and are associated with impairment in several cognitive domains, yet little is known about the influence of sex on these relationships.

Objectives: We examined the relationship between these symptoms with neuropsychological performance across a combined cohort with mild or major neurodegenerative disorders, then evaluated the impact of sex.

Design, Setting And Participants: We conducted a cohort analysis of participants in the COMPASS-ND study with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), vascular MCI, Alzheimer's disease, mixed dementia, Parkinson's disease, frontotemporal dementia, and cognitively unimpaired (CU) controls.

Neuropsychiatric symptoms and brain morphology in patients with mild cognitive impairment, cerebrovascular disease and Parkinson disease: A cross sectional and longitudinal study.

Objectives: Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) increase risk of developing dementia and are linked to various neurodegenerative conditions, including mild cognitive impairment (MCI due to Alzheimer's disease [AD]), cerebrovascular disease (CVD), and Parkinson's disease (PD). We explored the structural neural correlates of NPS cross-sectionally and longitudinally across various neurodegenerative diagnoses.

Methods: The study included individuals with MCI due to AD, (n = 74), CVD (n = 143), and PD (n = 137) at baseline, and at 2-years follow-up (MCI due to AD, n = 37, CVD n = 103, and PD n = 84).

Timely Yet Long Overdue: Canadian Standards for Long-Term Care Homes.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted systemic problems in Canadian long-term care (LTC). While high mortality rates in LTC received significant attention, the pandemic also took an enormous toll on mental health of LTC residents, where mental health conditions, including cognitive disorders, are already much higher than in other community settings. The pandemic resulted in a renewed interest in improving quality of care in LTC and led to the recent development of several National Standards of Canada.

Association between surgery and rate of incident dementia in older adults: A population-based retrospective cohort study.

Background: The risk of incident dementia after surgery in older adults is unclear. The study objective was to examine the rate of incident dementia among older adults after elective surgery compared with a matched nonsurgical control group.

Methods: We conducted a population-based, propensity-matched retrospective cohort study using data from linked administrative databases in Ontario, Canada.

Carbon sequestration in soils and climate change mitigation-Definitions and pitfalls.

The term carbon (C) sequestration has not just become a buzzword but is something of a siren's call to scientific communicators and media outlets. Carbon sequestration is the removal of C from the atmosphere and the storage, for example, in soil. It has the potential to partially compensate for anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and is, therefore, an important piece in the global climate change mitigation puzzle.

Risk of neurodegenerative disease or dementia in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a systematic review.

Purpose Of Review: Several psychiatric disorders have been associated with an increased risk of developing a neurodegenerative disease and/or dementia. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a neurodevelopmental disorder, has been understudied in relation to dementia risk. We summarized existing literature investigating the risk of incident neurodegenerative disease or dementia associated with ADHD.

Opioid deprescribing in long-term care in Ontario: A comparison of resident and facility characteristics.

Residents of long-term care (LTC) homes have potentially painful conditions and are prescribed opioids to manage their pain, despite the risks associated with the use of these high-risk medications. Therefore, the overall aim of this study was to describe the associations between resident and facility characteristics of residents prescribed long-term opioid therapy and those who remained on opioids or had opioids deprescribed. We conducted a retrospective cohort study utilizing health administrative databases housed within ICES.

White matter hyperintensities and smaller cortical thickness are associated with neuropsychiatric symptoms in neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular diseases.

Background: Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) are a core feature of most neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular diseases. White matter hyperintensities and brain atrophy have been implicated in NPS. We aimed to investigate the relative contribution of white matter hyperintensities and cortical thickness to NPS in participants across neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular diseases.

Cognitive correlates of antisaccade behaviour across multiple neurodegenerative diseases.

Oculomotor tasks generate a potential wealth of behavioural biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases. Overlap between oculomotor and disease-impaired circuitry reveals the location and severity of disease processes via saccade parameters measured from eye movement tasks such as prosaccade and antisaccade. Existing studies typically examine few saccade parameters in single diseases, using multiple separate neuropsychological test scores to relate oculomotor behaviour to cognition; however, this approach produces inconsistent, ungeneralizable results and fails to consider the cognitive heterogeneity of these diseases.

Elicited clinician knowledge did not improve dementia risk prediction in individuals with mild cognitive impairment.

Objectives: This study aims to develop and validate a Bayesian risk prediction model that combines research cohort data with elicited expert knowledge to predict dementia progression in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

Study Design And Setting: This is a prognostic risk prediction modeling study based on cohort data (Alzheimer's disease neuroimaging initiative [ADNI]; n = 365) of research participants with MCI and elicited expert data. Bayesian Cox models were used to combine expert knowledge and ADNI data to predict dementia progression in people with MCI.