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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53/100
(18)F-FDG PET of cerebral glucose metabolism is a valuable diagnostic tool for the prediction of clinical outcome in individual MCI patients.
Why it matters
In people with mild cognitive impairment, a PET scan suggesting Alzheimer's patterns predicted progression to dementia better than APOE genotype alone. This is about improving individual prognosis, not about treating, curing or preventing the disease.
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Full neuropsychological testing should then be performed to confirm a diagnosis of HIV dementia.
Why it matters
A new brief screening test, the International HIV Dementia Scale, was evaluated in HIV-positive people in the US and Uganda to help identify those at risk for HIV dementia. The authors conclude it may be useful for screening, but full neuropsychological testing is still needed to confirm a diagnosis.
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Depression in old age has a poor long-term prognosis; equal evidence shows that the same is true of depression in middle age.
Why it matters
This systematic review compared the prognosis of depression in old age with middle age, including mortality and risk of dementia. It does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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Self-assessment pain scales can be used reliably in the vast majority of older hospitalized patients with mild to moderate dementia and in nearly half of those with severe dementia.
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Prevalence of dementia subtypes in China is comparable with that in Western countries.
Why it matters
This survey in four regions of China identified 732 Alzheimer's disease cases and 295 vascular dementia cases among residents aged 55 and older. It provides prevalence estimates for these dementia subtypes in China but does not address treatment or prevention.
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Quality of life (QoL) is becoming an increasingly used outcome measure in both clinical practice and research but little is known about QoL in dementia and how it may change over time.
Why it matters
This one-year follow-up study measured quality of life in 60 people with dementia aged 65 or over. It is about how quality of life changes over time and does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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The MRC Cognitive Function and Ageing Study (CFAS) is a prospective longitudinal study of a population-based cohort of elderly people in six UK sites, evaluated using psychometric instruments and questionnaires to elucidate physical and mental health.
Why it matters
In this population-based brain donation study, both Alzheimer-type and vascular pathologies were common in people with and without dementia, and about 25% of respondents were misdiagnosed from pathology findings. This highlights how mixed and complex dementia pathology is, but it does not test a treatment, cure, or prevention.
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Care for U.S. nursing home residents with LRI and dementia is more aggressive than care for Dutch residents, particularly in residents with severe dementia.
Why it matters
This cohort study found that U.S. nursing home residents with dementia and lower respiratory tract infection received more aggressive treatment than Dutch residents of equal dementia severity, while Dutch mortality rates were higher overall. It compares care practices and does not test any treatment or prevention for dementia itself.
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Three-year longitudinal cohort study.
Why it matters
This cohort study assessed whether declining executive control function predicts change in functional status in normal aging. It does not test any treatment, cure or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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The DemTect is short (8-10 minutes), easy to administer, and its transformed total score (maximum 18) is independent of age and education.
Why it matters
This study describes the DemTect, a short cognitive screening test that classified mild cognitive impairment and early Alzheimer's disease better than the MMSE, with high sensitivities of 80% and 100%. It does not test any treatment, cure or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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The goal of this study was to determine the patient and caregiver characteristics associated with depression among caregivers of patients with dementia.
Why it matters
In this cross-sectional study, 32 percent of caregivers of patients with dementia reported six or more symptoms of depression, and several patient and caregiver characteristics were independently associated with caregiver depression. It identifies which caregivers may be at higher risk so they can be recognized, but it reports no treatment, cure or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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Frontotemporal dementia, semantic dementia, and Alzheimer disease are associated with distinct neuropsychological profiles that classify these dementia syndromes with considerable success.
Why it matters
A brief neuropsychological test battery distinguished Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal dementia, and semantic dementia with 89.2% accuracy in this small sample. This supports using cognitive testing to help tell these dementias apart, though it does not offer a treatment or cure.
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Patients with left and right predominant SD present with distinct behavioral-cognitive profiles.
Why it matters
This study characterized presenting symptoms in patients with semantic dementia and found that left and right temporal variants have distinct behavioral and cognitive profiles. It found that social awkwardness, job loss, loss of insight, and difficulty with person identification were more likely associated with major right temporal atrophy, while word-finding difficulties and reduced comprehension were more likely associated with left temporal atrophy.
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When applied post hoc to an existing population, the Mini-Cog was as effective in detecting dementia as longer screening and assessment instruments.
Why it matters
This study validated the Mini-Cog as a brief screening test for dementia in a population-based sample. It is a diagnostic tool and does not provide information on treating, curing, or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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We determined whether higher endogenous estradiol levels were associated with lower risk of dementia in older men and women not using hormonal replacement therapy, using a case-cohort design within the Rotterdam Study, a population-based follow-up study on chronic diseases, including dementia, in 7983 subjects aged 55 years or older, and ongoing since 1990.
Why it matters
In this Rotterdam Study analysis, higher endogenous estradiol levels in women were associated with a higher risk of dementia, not a lower one. It is an observational finding about a hormone level and does not show that changing estradiol treats or prevents dementia.
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A meta-analytic study was conducted to examine the hypothesis that aerobic fitness training enhances the cognitive vitality of healthy but sedentary older adults.
Why it matters
A meta-analysis of 18 intervention studies published between 1966 and 2001 tested whether aerobic fitness training improves cognition in healthy but sedentary older adults. Fitness training had selective benefits for cognition, largest for executive-control processes, and the size of the effect varied with factors such as the length and type of training.
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53/100
The adverse effects of obesity and hypertension in men are independent and cumulative with respect to cognitive deficit.
Why it matters
This study found that obesity and hypertension had adverse and cumulative effects on cognitive performance in men, but not in women, in the Framingham Heart Study. It does not test any treatment, cure or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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The QOL-AD seems to be reliable and valid for individuals with MMSE scores greater than 10.
Why it matters
This 2002 paper introduced the QOL-AD, a quality-of-life questionnaire for people with dementia that both the person and their caregiver fill in. In 177 patient–caregiver pairs it found the scale "reliable and valid for individuals with MMSE scores greater than 10"; everyone who could not complete it scored 10 or lower. Patient and caregiver ratings agreed only modestly (r = 0.14 to 0.39), so one can't simply replace the other. The study tests a measure, not a treatment.
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A key aspect of social cognition is the ability to infer other people's mental states, thoughts and feelings; referred to as 'theory of mind' (ToM).
Why it matters
Patients with frontal variant frontotemporal dementia were impaired on all theory-of-mind tests, while Alzheimer's disease patients failed only one test that relies heavily on working memory. This is a small clinical comparison study about thinking and behavior, not about treating or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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Because of conflicting results, in order to clarify the state of the science it was necessary to do a systematic analysis of the literature on research testing the effect of interventions on the burden of persons caring for family members with dementia.
Why it matters
This meta-analysis of 27 treatments found that, overall, interventions had no effect on caregiver burden, and only multicomponent interventions significantly reduced it. It concerns support for caregivers rather than treating, curing, or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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53/100
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53/100
Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a focal dementia characterized by an isolated and gradual dissolution of language function.
Why it matters
This 2001 review describes primary progressive aphasia (PPA), a dementia that begins with word-finding trouble and gradually affects language, while memory, visual processing and personality stay "relatively well-preserved until the advanced stages," which the review says helps tell it apart from frontal lobe dementia and typical Alzheimer's disease. It reports that most autopsies in PPA showed "either Pick's disease or lobar atrophy without distinctive histopathology," and only "a few patients" had Alzheimer's markers, so language-led decline is not necessarily Alzheimer's. It also warns that the term "semantic dementia" is used in two different senses, and it gives no case counts and does not address treatment, cure or prevention.
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The results of subsequent neuropathological studies were disappointing because of conflicting findings.
Why it matters
This review is about MRI findings in schizophrenia, including ventricular enlargement, and does not concern Alzheimer's disease. It provides no information on treating, curing or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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Cross sectional analysis comparing prospectively collected research data with MDS data reported from nursing homes on identical subjects.
Why it matters
This study assessed the validity and responsiveness of the Minimum Data Set by comparing it with research data on 140 people with Alzheimer's disease who entered nursing homes. It is about the quality of a nursing home assessment tool, not about treating, curing, or preventing the disease.
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A proportional increase in ADC compared with other ADIs and a marked increase in the median CD4 cell count at ADC diagnosis have occurred since the introduction of HAART in Australia.
Why it matters
This study of Australian AIDS notification data found that AIDS dementia complex constituted a larger proportion of initial AIDS-defining illnesses after the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy, and that median CD4 cell count at AIDS dementia complex diagnosis increased. It concerns AIDS dementia complex in the era of antiretroviral therapy, not Alzheimer's disease treatment, cure or prevention.
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.
- MELAS syndrome: Clinical manifestations, pathogenesis, and treatment options
- Trauma-Informed Hospice and Palliative Care
- Evaluation of four gamma-based methods for calculating confidence intervals for age-adjusted mortality rates when data are sparse
- Treatment of frontotemporal dementia
- Glucose, memory, and aging
- Evidence for Environmental Noise Effects on Health for the United Kingdom Policy Context: A Systematic Review of the Effects of Environmental Noise on Mental Health, Wellbeing, Quality of Life, Cancer, Dementia, Birth, Reproductive Outcomes, and Cognition
- Caregivers' understanding of dementia predicts patients' comfort at death: a prospective observational study
- Efficacy and Safety of Cilostazol in Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Randomized Clinical Trial
- Randomized, placebo-controlled, clinical trial of donepezil in vascular dementia: differential effects by hippocampal size
- Impact of anticoagulation on cognitive decline and clinical outcomes in patients with atrial fibrillation and dementia: A retrospective cohort study