Each study has a usefulness score out of 100 (rubric version 4.0). Tap a score to see what makes it up.
Highest usefulness score first. Studies without a score come last.
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Late-life depression is characterized by slowed information processing, which affects all realms of cognition.
Why it matters
In this cross-sectional study, older adults with major depression without dementia performed worse than controls in all cognitive domains, with slowed information processing explaining most of the impairment. This is about cognition in late-life depression, not about treating, curing or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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Long follow-up of a general aged population explains several inconsistencies of earlier reports.
Why it matters
In this 10-year study of 650 people aged 75 and over, cognitive decline at different time points was associated with different factors, including vascular diseases, APOE4, diabetes mellitus and feelings of loneliness. It reports risk associations over time and does not test a treatment, cure or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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Young adults typically deactivate specific brain regions during active task performance.
Why it matters
In 82 participants, this functional MRI study found that a medial parietal/posterior cingulate region stayed activated throughout a task in people with early Alzheimer-type dementia, unlike in young adults. It is a small imaging study of brain activity and offers no information on treating, curing or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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55/100
Eight hospitals in Baltimore, Maryland.
Why it matters
This cohort study of 674 hip fracture patients examined how common cognitive impairment was after fracture and how it changed over 2 and 12 months. It is about detecting and tracking cognitive problems after hip fracture and does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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55/100
Capacity assessments revealed that most residents could state a simple treatment preference (82.4%), but a sizable number did not retain capacity to understand treatment alternatives or appreciate the consequences of their choice.
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The idea of reserve against brain damage stems from the repeated observation that there does not appear to be a direct relationship between the degree of brain pathology or brain damage and the clinical manifestation of that damage.
Why it matters
Lays out a theory of reserve, built on the observation that the amount of brain damage does not map directly onto how much it shows up in symptoms. It separates passive models such as brain reserve from cognitive reserve, where the brain actively copes with or compensates for damage, and presents epidemiologic and imaging data that support the idea.
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55/100
Practitioners are keen to use snoezelen in dementia care, and some encouraging results have been documented in the area of promoting adaptive behaviours (e.g. The list of trials was compared with those identified from a search of the Specialized Register of the Cochrane Dementia and Cognitive Improvement Group.
Why it matters
This systematic review of two trials on snoezelen for dementia found that pooled results were not significant, though one trial showed significantly fewer apathetic behaviors during snoezelen sessions. The evidence is limited and inconsistent, so it does not establish snoezelen as an effective treatment for dementia.
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Shunting INPH is associated with an approximately 29% rate of significant improvement and a 6% significant complication rate.
Why it matters
This review of idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus found that shunting produced improvement in about 59% of patients and prolonged improvement in about 29%, with a 6% combined rate of permanent neurological deficit and death. It concerns a different condition that can mimic neurodegenerative disorders and does not address treating, curing, or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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This study suggests that the Intensive Care Delirium Screening Checklist can easily be applied by a clinician or a nurse in a busy critical care setting to screen all patients even when communication is compromised.
Why it matters
This study evaluated a screening checklist for delirium in intensive care unit patients, not a treatment or cure for Alzheimer's disease. It found that the checklist could help detect delirium, but it does not address Alzheimer's disease directly.
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Exposure to ACH medications is independently and specifically associated with a subsequent increase in delirium symptom severity in elderly medical inpatients with diagnosed delirium.
Why it matters
In older medical inpatients with delirium, increased exposure to anticholinergic medications was associated with greater delirium severity, and dementia did not change this association. This concerns delirium severity, not treating, curing, or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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The Mini-Mental State (MMS) is a brief structured test of cognitive function.
Why it matters
This study adapted and normalized the Mini-Mental State test for Spanish-speaking populations and recommends a cut-off of 24/25, with scores adjusted for age and education. It is a screening and diagnosis tool and does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention.
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Thyroid status was measured at baseline (1990-93), through assessment of serum antibodies to thyroid peroxidase (TPO-Abs, positive: >10 IU/ml), serum TSH levels, and when TSH was abnormal ( 4.0 mU/l), serum thyroxin levels (T4).
Why it matters
In this population, people with reduced TSH levels at baseline had a more than threefold increased risk of dementia. This links an abnormal thyroid hormone level to later dementia risk, but it does not show that treating thyroid problems prevents dementia.
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We describe demographic, clinical, laboratory and aetiological findings in 93 consecutive patients with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behaviour disorder (RBD), which consists of excessive motor activity during dreaming in association with loss of skeletal muscle atonia of REM sleep.
Why it matters
This study describes demographic, clinical, and laboratory findings in patients with REM sleep behaviour disorder, noting that neurological disorders including Parkinson's disease and dementia were present in many. It does not report a treatment, cure, or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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55/100
The aim of this prospective cohort study was to identify the risk factors involved in falls in 190 elderly residents of two geriatric centres in Granada (Andalusia, Spain).
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Our study suggests that being a caregiver who is experiencing mental or emotional strain is an independent risk factor for mortality among elderly spousal caregivers.
Why it matters
Following 392 older spousal caregivers and 427 non-caregivers, this study found that caregivers who reported mental or emotional strain had a 63% higher risk of death over 4 years than non-caregivers. Caregivers who did not report strain did not have elevated adjusted death rates.
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Clinical management of DLB patients usually centers on the treatment of noncognitive features.
Why it matters
This 1999 Consortium workshop report found that a diagnosis of probable dementia with Lewy bodies under the 1996 criteria was usually correct (specificity "generally high (>85%)"), but that many cases were missed ("sensitivity of case detection is lower and more variable"). It recommended keeping the criteria unchanged while research worked on catching more cases, and said depression and REM sleep behaviour disorder "may be" additional supportive features. On treatment, it said care "usually centers on the treatment of noncognitive features" and that randomised trials in DLB were a "pressing need".
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Although the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) is widely used in clinical practice, few norms exist for healthy populations covering a broad range of ages.
Why it matters
This study provides Mini-Mental State Examination score norms for healthy adults by age, gender, and education, based on 908 people in Italy. These norms may help doctors judge whether a person's score is unusual for their background, but the study does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention.
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This study describes automated procedures for obtaining accurate and explicit reconstructions of the human cortical surface.
Why it matters
This work provides automated tools to reconstruct the human cortical surface, which helps researchers study two-dimensional cortical properties. Automated unfolding and flattening routines are described in a companion paper.
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A novel approach to correcting for intensity nonuniformity in magnetic resonance (MR) data is described that achieves high performance without requiring a model of the tissue classes present.
Why it matters
Describes N3, a method for automatically correcting uneven brightness (intensity nonuniformity) in MRI data without needing a model of the tissue types present. It is a technical imaging method, not a study of dementia.
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In our population, the prevalence of stroke was higher than in previous studies.
Why it matters
This population survey found that stroke survivors were more disabled and more at risk for dementia than stroke-free subjects. It reports an association between stroke and dementia but does not test or report any treatment, cure, or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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There are specific risk factors associated with feeding tube placement in nursing home residents with severe cognitive impairment.
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We identified optimal staining methods for each of these and devised a protocol for the evaluation of cortical LB frequency based on a brain sampling procedure consistent with CERAD.
Why it matters
This consensus report devised a protocol for evaluating cortical Lewy body frequency and classifying cases into brainstem predominant, limbic, and neocortical subtypes, and recommended procedures for sampling and storing frozen tissue for neurochemical assays. It notes that the precise relationship between dementia with Lewy bodies and Alzheimer's disease remains uncertain.
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White matter findings were significantly associated with age, silent stroke, hypertension, FEV1, and income.
Why it matters
Among 3301 adults aged 65 or older who had brain MRI, more white matter changes were associated with older age, silent strokes, higher blood pressure, lower lung function and lower income. The changes were also associated with poorer thinking and lower extremity function, so the authors say they may not be benign.
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In a placebo-controlled, randomized, double-blind clinical trial, 40 patients with a mean age of 68 (+/- 12.5) years suffering from moderate dementia (Alzheimer, vascular, or mixed type) according to DSM-III-R criteria were included.
Why it matters
In this small trial of 40 patients with moderate dementia, those given infusions of Ginkgo biloba extract EGb 761 scored better on daily living, global impression, and intelligence measures than those given placebo. This suggests short-term infusion therapy may improve symptoms and daily functioning, but it does not show the disease can be cured or prevented.
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SubD was more prevalent than MDD in these primary care settings.
Why it matters
This primary care study found that both major depression and subsyndromal depression were common and linked to functional impairment, and it assessed a short depression screen. It concerns depression in primary care and does not test a treatment, cure or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
From across this topic
10 of the 7,967 studies in this topic, picked by a fixed rule (a hash of each study's address), not by score or date; each page of this list shows a different 10. The same 10 appear here every time.
- Time spent in outdoor light is associated with the risk of dementia: a prospective cohort study of 362094 participants
- Cognitive function, dementia and type 2 diabetes mellitus in the elderly
- Assessment of digital EEG, quantitative EEG, and EEG brain mapping: report of the American Academy of Neurology and the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society [RETIRED]
- The United States CADASIL Consortium: Baseline Findings from a Natural History Study
- Western Mediterranean diet predicts 9-year changes in episodic memory in an adult lifespan sample of Americans
- Societal Costs of Dementia: 204 Countries, 2000-2019
- Cross-cultural functional assessment for dementia: A commentary
- Serum cholesterol changes after midlife and late-life cognition: twenty-one-year follow-up study
- P3‐259: Geographic variation in mortality from dementia in the United States in 1999‐2006
- Adoption of Medicare's Cognitive Assessment and Care Plan Services Benefit: People, Plans, Payment, and Providers