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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Six predefined service goals were set: high acceptability; high appropriate referral rate; successful engagement with people from minority ethnic groups; successful engagement with people with young onset dementia; focus on engagement with mild cases to enable early intervention; and an increase in the overall number of new cases of dementia seen.
Why it matters
A memory service met its goals for acceptability, appropriate referrals, engagement of minority ethnic groups and younger people, and seeing more mild cases, and those referred had less behavioural disturbance and better quality of life at 6 months. This is about improving access and care for people with mild to moderate dementia, not about treating, curing, or preventing the disease.
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Free radical-mediated oxidative damage is thought to play a role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease.
Why it matters
This review gathers autopsy studies of people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment and reports "increased lipid peroxidation as well as protein, DNA, and RNA oxidation in multiple brain regions", the same kinds of damage earlier seen in late-stage Alzheimer's. The authors argue this makes oxidative damage "an early event" and a possible treatment target. Because the evidence comes from brain tissue after death, it shows the damage is present early, not that it causes the disease. No treatment was tested.
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Videoconferencing (VC) technology has been used successfully to provide psychiatric services to patients in rural and otherwise underserved settings.
Why it matters
This small study gave a brief set of neuropsychological tests to 14 people with mild cognitive impairment and 19 with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease, both in person and by videoconference. Test scores were highly similar in both settings, suggesting videoconference testing may be a valid way to assess cognition in people who cannot easily attend in person.
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The concept of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has been proposed to represent a transitional stage between normal aging and dementia.
Why it matters
In 60 people with mild cognitive impairment, smaller baseline volumes of the right hippocampus and right entorhinal cortex predicted progression to dementia, and entorhinal cortex volume predicted conversion to Alzheimer's disease specifically. Baseline MMSE score, white matter lesions, and APOE genotype were not significant predictors.
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Further long-term studies are needed to examine the time-dependent evolution from mild cognitive impairment to dementia and to establish age-specific conversion rates during lifetime.
Why it matters
In a community sample of 1,045 dementia-free people aged 75 and over followed for six years, about 60-65% of those with mild cognitive impairment developed clinical dementia during their life, with progression occurring primarily within the initial 18 months. The authors challenge current assumptions about yearly and lifetime conversion rates and call for further long-term studies; no treatment is tested.
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Nephrologists commonly engage in end-of-life decision-making with patients with ESRD and their families.
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Despite providing high-intensity care, often for years, many bereaved caregivers perceived themselves as unprepared for the death.
Why it matters
This study found that 23% of bereaved caregivers of dementia patients were not prepared for the death, and that these caregivers had more depression, anxiety, and complicated grief symptoms. It also found that black caregivers, those with less education, less income, and more depressive symptoms prior to the death were more likely to perceive themselves as not at all prepared.
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Rates of hospice use observed in this study (22%) were considerably higher than previously reported, although persons with dementia may continue to be underreferred.
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We present a review of the literature on Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) together with the analysis of neuropschychological and neuroradiologic profiles of 42 PPA patients.
Why it matters
This review describes language variants of primary progressive aphasia and their cognitive and imaging features, but it reports no treatment, cure, or prevention. It supports better clinical and pathological characterization of these variants rather than any therapy.
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Antimuscarinic agents are the predominant pharmacological treatment for patients with overactive bladder (OAB).
Why it matters
This review discusses that antimuscarinic drugs for overactive bladder may cause cognitive dysfunction, including memory loss, because most available agents lack selectivity for the M3 receptor subtype. It suggests that agents with increased selectivity for M3 receptors may reduce this risk.
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The IADL-E is a reliable, sensitive and responsive scale of functional abilities useful in dementia screening in a socioculturally heterogeneous population.
Why it matters
The Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale for elderly people showed high internal consistency and, at a cutoff score of 16, a sensitivity of 0.91 and specificity of 0.99 for dementia. This is a screening and disability measurement tool, not a treatment, cure, or prevention of Alzheimer's disease.
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The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between total cholesterol (TC) and cognitive performance within the context of the Framingham Heart Study, a large, community-based, prospective investigation of cardiovascular risk factors.
Why it matters
This study examined whether long-term total cholesterol levels relate to thinking abilities in people free of dementia and stroke. It is observational and does not test whether lowering cholesterol affects dementia risk.
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A hypothetical construct of "cognitive reserve" is widely used to explain how, in the face of neurodegenerative changes that are similar in nature and extent, individuals vary considerably in the severity of cognitive aging and clinical dementia.
Why it matters
This paper discusses cognitive reserve, suggesting that intelligence, education, and occupational level help explain why people differ in cognitive aging and dementia despite similar neurodegenerative changes. It is a conceptual review and does not report a treatment, cure, or prevention.
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The authors report the incidence of dementia in a community-dwelling Brazilian population.
Why it matters
This study reports the incidence of dementia over about 3.25 years in a community-dwelling Brazilian population aged 65 or older, most with very low educational level. It is an observational incidence study and does not test any treatment, cure or prevention.
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HIV has a propensity to invade subcortical regions of the brain, which may lead to a subcortical dementia termed HIV-cognitive motor complex.
Why it matters
In 15 HIV subjects and 13 controls, HIV patients with dementia, but not those without, had significantly lower dopamine transporter availability in the putamen and ventral striatum, while dopamine D2 receptor availability showed only mild, non-significant decreases. The authors call this the first evidence of dopamine terminal injury in HIV dementia and suggest decreased transporter availability may contribute to its pathogenesis.
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Vascular dementia (VaD) is the second-most-common cause of dementia in the elderly, after Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Why it matters
This review describes vascular dementia as the second most common cause of dementia in the elderly and states that the cholinesterase inhibitors used for Alzheimer's disease are also useful in vascular dementia. It says prevention should focus on reducing stroke and cardiovascular disease and controlling risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol and high homocysteine.
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Lacunar infarcts, small deep infarcts that result from occlusion of a penetrating artery, account for about a quarter of all ischaemic strokes.
Why it matters
This review reports that after lacunar infarction patients have an increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia, and that risk-factor modification is likely to play a large part in treatment. It does not report any proven treatment, cure, or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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We selected screening tests that met 2 criteria: 1) administration time of 10 minutes or less in studies including individuals with, and without, dementia; and 2) performance characteristics evaluated in at least 1 community or clinical sample of older adults.
Why it matters
This review compared brief screening tests for dementia that take 10 minutes or less and have been evaluated in older adults. It does not test any treatment, so it offers no information about curing or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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We determined the prevalence of dementia in a cohort of 2494 elderly Nigerians residents in Idikan Community, Ibadan, Nigeria.
Why it matters
This study found much lower prevalence of dementia and Alzheimer's disease in elderly Nigerians than in African Americans, and found no association between Alzheimer's disease and the apolipoprotein E epsilon4 allele in the Nigerian sample. It does not test any treatment, cure or prevention.
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44/100
Design of the physical environment is increasingly recognized as an important aid in caring for people with dementia.
Why it matters
This review examines empirical research on how the physical environment of care settings affects people with dementia, covering facility planning, environmental attributes, building organization, and specific rooms. It identifies major themes and notes strengths and shortcomings in the methodology and applicability of the findings.
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Dietary intake of fatty acids may be related to dementia and cognitive function through a number of plausible mechanisms, such as atherosclerosis and thrombosis, inflammation, via an effect on brain development and membrane functioning, or via accumulation of beta-amyloid.
Why it matters
This review summarises a small number of studies on fatty acid intake and dementia or cognitive function, including two Dutch population studies. It discusses possible mechanisms and limitations of dietary intake studies, so it does not establish that any fatty acid prevents or treats Alzheimer's disease.
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44/100
Attention to three themes may help clinicians and investigators meet the challenge of treating the common mental disorders of later life: the effect of these disorders on functioning, prevention of the consequences of mental disorders, and integration of mental health care and primary health care services.
Why it matters
This review describes how common dementia, depression and other mental disorders are in older adults and how they affect daily life and care. It is about describing the scale of these conditions, not about treating, curing or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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Lack of insight or impaired awareness of deficits in patients with dementia is a relatively neglected area of study.
Why it matters
This study looked at how aware patients with dementia are of their own memory problems, using two rating scales in 69 patients with Alzheimer's disease or vascular dementia. It found that this awareness relates to the level of cognitive impairment in a nonlinear way, which may help caregivers and clinicians understand when patients are likely to recognize their deficits.
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Education was independently associated with cognitive impairment and dementia among a representative community-based sample of African Americans and the association remains significant across a variety of sensitivity analyses designed to control for measurement and confounding biases.
Why it matters
This community-based study of African Americans found that age, education and rural residence to age 60 were independently associated with cognitive impairment, dementia and Alzheimer's type dementia. Education remained associated with cognitive impairment and dementia across sensitivity analyses.
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Sickness at admission and functional impairment do not explain the increase in DNR orders with age or the disparity across diagnosis.
Why it matters
This study examined do-not-resuscitate orders in hospitalized Medicare patients and found that they were assigned more often to sicker patients. It concluded that sickness at admission and functional impairment did not explain the increase in DNR orders with age or the disparity across diagnosis, and that further evaluation is needed.
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.
- Donepezil treatment of patients with MCI: a 48-week randomized, placebo-controlled trial
- The final year for community-dwelling older adults with dementia in an Asian setting: admissions, interventions, and caregiver burden
- Cerebral Perfusion and the Risk of Dementia: A Population-Based Study
- Expanding the Boundaries of Palliative Care: Diseases of the Nervous System and Survival Prognosis in Home-Based Programs
- Maternal anxiety and infants' hippocampal development: timing matters
- Does the risk of developing dementia increase with the number of episodes in patients with depressive disorder and in patients with bipolar disorder?
- Recapitulation of Ageism in Artificial Intelligence–Generated Images: Longitudinal Comparative Study
- The experience of “at‐risk” status for familial frontotemporal dementia (fFTD) and its impact on reproductive decision‐making: A qualitative study
- The Determinants of Quality of Life of Nursing Home Residents with Young-Onset Dementia and the Differences between Dementia Subtypes
- Screening for cognitive impairment in older adults: A systematic review for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force