Translation and Cultural Adaptation of Tools to Assess Diverse Asian American and Asian Canadian Populations: The Asian Cohort for Alzheimer’s Disease Study.

Background: Socio‐cultural and language‐appropriate study materials and instruments are critical for accurate assessment of cognitive function in people from diverse backgrounds. Most research uses cognitive tests based on Western, industrialized, English‐speaking cultures and may not reflect global experiences. The purpose of this study was to describe the translations of study materials and cultural adaptations that were developed for the Asian Cohort for Alzheimer’s Disease (ACAD).

Asian Cohort for Alzheimer’s Disease (ACAD) Study on Genetic and Non‐Genetic Risk Factors for Alzheimer’s Disease among Asian Americans and Canadians.

Background: Asian Americans and Asian Canadians (ASACs) are the fastest growing minority group in the US and Canada. However, ASACs are under‐sampled in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research. To address the need of culturally appropriate clinical protocols and community‐based recruitment approaches for ASACs, the Asian Cohort for Alzheimer’s Disease (ACAD), the first large dementia genetics cohort focusing on Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese, launched in 2021 to examine genetic and non‐genetic risk factors for AD among ASACs.

Use of a blood‐based amyloid test for screening in INVOKE‐2: a phase 2 randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled study evaluating AL002 in early Alzheimer’s disease.

Background: The PrecivityAD® blood‐test (C2N Diagnostics) predicts cerebral amyloidosis due to Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). PrecivityAD® incorporates plasma Aβ42/40, age and apoE proteotype into an algorithm that generates an amyloid probability score (APS) corresponding to the likelihood of a positive amyloid PET scan, defined as ≥25 centiloid (CL). A prototype PrecivityAD algorithm validated against amyloid PET status scored by visual read (VR) was used to improve screening efficiency in INVOKE‐2, a phase 2 randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled trial evaluating TREM2‐activating antibody AL002 in early AD.

Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor Exposure Is Associated with Lower Alzheimer's Disease Risk: A Retrospective Cohort Proof-of-Concept Study.

Brain somatic gene recombination (SGR) and the endogenous reverse transcriptases (RTs) that produce it have been implicated in the etiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD), suggesting RT inhibitors as novel prophylactics or therapeutics. This retrospective, proof-of-concept study evaluated the incidence of AD in people with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) with or without exposure to nucleoside RT inhibitors (NRTIs) using de-identified medical claims data. Eligible participants were aged ≥60 years, without pre-existing AD diagnoses, and pursued medical services in the United States from October 2015 to September 2016.

Asian Cohort for Alzheimer's Disease (ACAD) pilot study on genetic and non-genetic risk factors for Alzheimer's disease among Asian Americans and Canadians.

Introduction: Clinical research in Alzheimer's disease (AD) lacks cohort diversity despite being a global health crisis. The Asian Cohort for Alzheimer's Disease (ACAD) was formed to address underrepresentation of Asians in research, and limited understanding of how genetics and non-genetic/lifestyle factors impact this multi-ethnic population.

Methods: The ACAD started fully recruiting in October 2021 with one central coordination site, eight recruitment sites, and two analysis sites.

Medial Temporal Lobe Tau Aggregation Relates to Divergent Cognitive and Emotional Empathy Abilities in Alzheimer's Disease.

Background: In Alzheimer's disease (AD), the gradual accumulation of amyloid-β (Aβ) and tau proteins may underlie alterations in empathy.

Objective: To assess whether tau aggregation in the medial temporal lobes related to differences in cognitive empathy (the ability to take others' perspectives) and emotional empathy (the ability to experience others' feelings) in AD.

Methods: Older adults (n = 105) completed molecular Aβ positron emission tomography (PET) scans.

Using community-based geographical information system (GIS) to recruit older Asian Americans in an Alzheimer's disease study.

Objective: This study aims to show the usefulness of incorporating a community-based geographical information system (GIS) in recruiting research participants for the Asian Cohort for Alzheimer's Disease (ACAD) study for using the subgroup of Korean American (KA) older adults. The ACAD study is the first large study in the USA and Canada focusing on the recruitment of Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese older adults to address the issues of under-representation of Asian Americans in clinical research.

Methods: To promote clinical research participation of racial/ethnic minority older adults with and without dementia, we used GIS by collaborating with community members to delineate boundaries for geographical clusters and enclaves of church and senior networks, and KA serving ethnic clinics.

Higher emotional granularity relates to greater inferior frontal cortex cortical thickness in healthy, older adults.

Individuals with high emotional granularity make fine-grained distinctions between their emotional experiences. To have greater emotional granularity, one must acquire rich conceptual knowledge of emotions and use this knowledge in a controlled and nuanced way. In the brain, the neural correlates of emotional granularity are not well understood.

Privileged but not in Power: How Asian American Tech Workers use Racial Strategies to Deflect and Confront Race and Racism.

Research on tech workers has often focused on racial inequalities within the industry but has failed to seriously consider Asian American professionals as racialized subjects. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by centering Asian Americans as workers whose racial identity impacts their career trajectory and professional experiences in the high-tech industry. Based on 57 interviews with Asian American tech professionals, I find that Asian Americans use four main racial strategies to deflect or confront racism in the workplace Three of these racial strategies-racial maneuvering, essentializing, distancing- intentionally remove Asian Americans from the glare of racism.

Increasing empathic concern relates to salience network hyperconnectivity in cognitively healthy older adults with elevated amyloid-β burden.

Enhanced emotional empathy, the ability to share others' affective experiences, can be a feature of Alzheimer's disease (AD), but whether emotional empathy increases in the preclinical phase of the disease is unknown. We measured emotional empathy over time (range = 0 - 7.3 years, mean = 2.

Dynamic autonomic nervous system states arise during emotions and manifest in basal physiology.

The outflow of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) is continuous and dynamic, but its functional organization is not well understood. Whether ANS patterns accompany emotions, or arise in basal physiology, remain unsettled questions in the field. Here, we searched for brief ANS patterns amidst continuous, multichannel physiological recordings in 45 healthy older adults.

Artificial Intelligence for Rapid Meta-Analysis: Case Study on Ocular Toxicity of Hydroxychloroquine.

Background: Rapid access to evidence is crucial in times of an evolving clinical crisis. To that end, we propose a novel approach to answer clinical queries, termed rapid meta-analysis (RMA). Unlike traditional meta-analysis, RMA balances a quick time to production with reasonable data quality assurances, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to strike this balance.

Variability in Collection and Use of Race/Ethnicity and Language Data in 93 Pediatric Hospitals.

Objective: To describe how pediatric hospitals across the USA and Canada collect race/ethnicity and language preference (REaL) data and how they stratify quality and safety metrics using such data.

Methods: Pediatric hospitals from the Solutions for Patient Safety network (125 US, 6 Canadian) were surveyed between January and March 2018 on collection and use of patient/family race/ethnicity data and patient/family language preference data. The study team created the survey using a formal process including pre-testing.

Effect of AZD0530 on Cerebral Metabolic Decline in Alzheimer Disease: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Oligomeric amyloid-β peptide binds to cellular prion protein on the neuronal cell surface, activating intracellular fyn kinase to mediate synaptotoxicity and tauopathy. AZD0530 is an investigational kinase inhibitor specific for the Src family, including fyn, that has been repurposed for the treatment of Alzheimer disease.

Objective: To determine whether AZD0530 treatment slows the decline in cerebral metabolic rate for glucose (CMRgl) and is safe and well tolerated.

Anodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to the Left Rostrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Selectively Improves Source Memory Retrieval.

Functional neuroimaging studies have consistently implicated the left rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPFC) as playing a crucial role in the cognitive operations supporting episodic memory and analogical reasoning. However, the degree to which the left RLPFC causally contributes to these processes remains underspecified. We aimed to assess whether targeted anodal stimulation-thought to boost cortical excitability-of the left RLPFC with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) would lead to augmentation of episodic memory retrieval and analogical reasoning task performance in comparison to cathodal stimulation or sham stimulation.

BrainWorks: A Comparative Effectiveness Trial to Examine Alzheimer's Disease Education for Community-Dwelling African Americans.

Objectives: To test a culturally tailored intervention to improve Alzheimer's disease (AD) literacy among African Americans.

Design: A 3-arm randomized comparative effectiveness trial.

Setting: Community sites in Los Angeles, CA.

Fundamental causes of barriers to participation in Alzheimer's clinical research among African Americans.

African Americans have a significantly higher risk than Whites for developing Alzheimer's disease (AD), but show lower participation in AD clinical trials. Studies of African Americans' involvement in clinical research have identified fear and mistrust of research as barriers to participation. Historical occurrences of unethical research practices are often cited as the source of these attitudes, but underlying factors such as African Americans' experiences of racism and discrimination remain unexplored.

Differential Medial Temporal Lobe and Parietal Cortical Contributions to Real-world Autobiographical Episodic and Autobiographical Semantic Memory.

Autobiographical remembering can depend on two forms of memory: episodic (event) memory and autobiographical semantic memory (remembering personally relevant semantic knowledge, independent of recalling a specific experience). There is debate about the degree to which the neural signals that support episodic recollection relate to or build upon autobiographical semantic remembering. Pooling data from two fMRI studies of memory for real-world personal events, we investigated whether medial temporal lobe (MTL) and parietal subregions contribute to autobiographical episodic and semantic remembering.

Multi-voxel pattern classification differentiates personally experienced event memories from secondhand event knowledge.

Studies of autobiographical memory retrieval often use photographs to probe participants' memories for past events. Recent neuroimaging work has shown that viewing photographs depicting events from one's own life evokes a characteristic pattern of brain activity across a network of frontal, parietal, and medial temporal lobe regions that can be readily distinguished from brain activity associated with viewing photographs from someone else's life (Rissman, Chow, Reggente, and Wagner, 2016). However, it is unclear whether the neural signatures associated with remembering a personally experienced event are distinct from those associated with recognizing previously encountered photographs of an event.

White Matter Disruption and Connected Speech in Non-Fluent and Semantic Variants of Primary Progressive Aphasia.

Differential patterns of white matter disruption have recently been reported in the non-fluent (nfvPPA) and semantic (svPPA) variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA). No single measure is sufficient to distinguish between the PPA variants, but connected speech allows for the quantification of multiple measures. The aim of the present study was to further investigate the white matter correlates associated with connected speech features in PPA.

Neurocognitive mechanisms of real-world autobiographical memory retrieval: insights from studies using wearable camera technology.

In recent years, investigation into the cognitive and neural mechanisms of autobiographical memory has been aided by the use of experimental paradigms incorporating wearable camera technology. By effortlessly capturing first-person images of one's life events, these cameras provide a rich set of naturalistic stimuli that can later be used to trigger the recall of specific episodes. Here, we chronicle the development and progression of such studies in behavioral and neuroimaging examinations of both clinical and nonclinical adult populations.

Selective progesterone receptor modulators (SPRMs) for uterine fibroids.

Background: Uterine fibroids are smooth muscle tumours arising from the uterus. These tumours, although benign, are commonly associated with abnormal uterine bleeding, bulk symptoms and reproductive dysfunction. The importance of progesterone in fibroid pathogenesis supports selective progesterone receptor modulators (SPRMs) as effective treatment.