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"We need to retrace the steps of the development of these diseases," Doty said. "We know loss of smell is an early sign of their onset, so finding common factors associated with the smell loss could provide clues as to the pre-existing processes that initiate the first stages of a number of neurodegenerative diseases. An understanding of such processes could provide novel approaches to their treatment, including ways to slow down or stop their development before irreversible damage has occurred." Currently, it's is generally believed that the smell loss of various neurodegenerative diseases is caused by disease-specific pathology. In other words, different diseases can bring about the same loss of smell for different reasons. Doty's review -- the first of its kind -- looked at many neurodegenerative diseases with varying degrees of smell loss and sought to find a common link that may explain such losses. He considered physiological factors as well as env...

But all is not lost according to the first study to look at and measure communication outcomes in both the caregiver spouse and the patient with dementia. In fact, researchers from Florida Atlantic University have found that "practice makes perfect" with the right intervention and a tool that can accurately measure couples' communication. Results from the study are published in the journal  Issues in Mental Health Nursing . "There has been very little focus on the patient with dementia's role in maintaining spousal relationships through conversation," said Christine L. Williams, DNSc, principal investigator of the study and a professor and director of the Ph.D. in Nursing Program in FAU's Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, who designed the intervention program and developed the first tool that measures couples' communication. "Maybe it's because researchers assume that the patient can't have a positive influence on communication ...

"The growing public health threat posed by Alzheimer's disease has raised urgency to discover and assess prognostic markers for the early detection of the disease," says Sheng Luo, PhD, senior author of the report. "We assessed the comparative predictive utility of thirty-three longitudinal markers in determining the risk of AD conversion at future time points among individuals with MCI. We found that longitudinal measurements of common cognitive and functional tools can provide more accurate prediction regarding AD conversion than volumetric MRI markers for MCI patients, and markers would show different predictive values at different times in disease progression." The data used for this study was from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) study. It was very well suited for the tasks because of its large samples, long follow-up period, breadth of cognitive markers and biomarkers, and prospective nature. "We simultaneously modeled t...

The joint study, published in the  Neurobiology of Aging  on May 8, looked at older adults who are living in the Toronto community without assistance and who were unaware of any major memory problems, but scored below the normal benchmark on a dementia screening test. Within these older adults, researchers also found evidence of less brain tissue in the same subregion of the brain where Alzheimer's disease originates (the anterolateral entorhinal cortex located in the brain's temporal lobe). This U of T-Baycrest study is the first to measure this particular brain subregion in older adults who do not have a dementia diagnosis or memory problems that affect their day-to-day routine. It is also the first study to demonstrate that performance on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) dementia screening test is linked to the volume (size) of this subregion, along with other brain regions affected early in the course of Alzheimer's disease. "This work is an importa...

The population-based study by Rodolfo Savica, M.D., Ph.D., and coauthors of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester Minn., included all the residents of Minnesota's Olmsted County and identified 461 patients with synucleinopathies and 452 patients without for comparison. From 1991 through 2010, the 461 patients with a synucleinopathy diagnosis included 309 with Parkinson disease, 81 with dementia with Lewy bodies, 55 with Parkinson disease dementia and 16 with multiple system atrophy with parkinsonism. Parkinsonism was defined as the presence of at least 2 of 4 cardinal signs: rest tremor, bradykinesia, rigidity and impaired postural reflexes. Of the 461 patients with synucleinopathies, 316 (68.6 percent) died during follow-up, while among the 452 participants used for comparison, 220 (48.7 percent) died during follow-up. Overall, patients with synucleinopathies died about two years earlier than participants without in the comparison group. The highest risk of death was seen among patie...

Tau deposits within the mind of a affected person with early-stage Alzheimer’s illness. The nice and cozy colors point out areas of heavy deposition and the distinction in unfold between the affected person’s first scan (left) and second scan 17 months later (proper). Credit score: Picture courtesy of Karolinska Institutet In a brand new research introduced in  Molecular Psychiatry , researchers at Karolinska Institutet have measured how deposits of the pathological protein tau unfold via the mind over the course of Alzheimer's illness. Their outcomes present that the scale of the deposit and the pace of its unfold differ from one particular person to the subsequent, and that giant quantities of tau within the mind will be linked to episodic reminiscence impairment. Already in a really early part of Alzheimer's illness there may be an accumulation of tau within the mind cells, the place its antag...