Alzheimer's disease is a devastating illness, and patients may be exceptionally concerned that they have genes that contribute to this illness, especially if there is a family history of Alzheimer's disease. This article reviews core findings regarding the genes that contribute to the early-onset (familial) and late-onset forms of Alzheimer's disease and related findings regarding the needs of psychiatrists when discussing the disease with patients. Previously, clinicians believed that patients who tested positive for the APOE gene linked to late-onset Alzheimer's disease would be harmed by this knowledge to a greater extent than those who did not know they had the gene. Thus, clinicians were strongly recommending to patients that they not have this testing. This article includes the practice-changing relevance of a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which reported that a group of patients tested for the APOE gene who found out that they were positive for this gene were not significantly harmed by having acquired this knowledge.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
---|---|
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2989837 | PMC |
J Biochem Mol Toxicol
January 2025
Department of Medical Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University, Kahramanmaraş, Turkey.
Neurodegenerative diseases are significant health concerns that have a profound impact on the quality and duration of life for millions of individuals. These diseases are characterized by pathological changes in various brain regions, specific genetic mutations associated with the disease, deposits of abnormal proteins, and the degeneration of neurological cells. As neurodegenerative disorders vary in their epidemiological characteristics and vulnerability of neurons, treatment of these diseases is usually aimed at slowing disease progression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Geriatr Psychiatry
January 2025
Precision Neuroscience & Neuromodulation Program, Gordon Center for Medical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by impaired inhibitory circuitry and GABAergic dysfunction, which is associated with reduced fast brain oscillations in the gamma band (γ, 30-90 Hz) in several animal models. Investigating such activity in human patients could lead to the identification of novel biomarkers of diagnostic and prognostic value. The current study aimed to test a multimodal "Perturbation-based" transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation-Electroencephalography (tACS)-EEG protocol to detect how responses to tACS in AD patients correlate with patients' clinical phenotype.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
TauRx Therapeutics, Aberdeen, Scotland.
The purpose of this article is to infer patient level outcomes from population level randomized control trials (RCTs). In this pursuit, we utilize the recently proposed synthetic nearest neighbors (SNN) estimator. At its core, SNN leverages information across patients to impute missing data associated with each patient of interest.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry
January 2025
Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.
Background: Depression is often cited as a major modifiable risk factor for dementia, though the relative contributions of a true causal relationship, reverse causality and confounding factors remain unclear. This study applied a subset of the Bradford Hill criteria for causation to depression and dementia including strength of effect, specificity, temporality, biological gradient and coherence.
Methods: A total of 491 557 participants in UK Biobank aged between 40 and 69 at enrolment and followed up for a mean duration of 12.
Pharmacol Res
January 2025
Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Xiangtan Central Hospital (The affiliated hospital of Hunan university), Xiangtan 411100, China. Electronic address:
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!