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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Midlife CVRFs, especially hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and smoking, are common and associated with accelerated cognitive decline at midlife.
Why it matters
In middle-aged adults, smoking, hypertension, and diabetes were linked to a higher likelihood of accelerated cognitive decline over 5 years, while obesity and high cholesterol were not. This suggests these cardiovascular risk factors may matter for midlife cognition, but the study did not test whether treating them prevents dementia.
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During follow-up, 60 individuals developed dementia, of which 49 had Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Why it matters
In 1,322 older adults from the Rotterdam Study who wore an activity monitor, taking longer to fall asleep, more time awake at night, more time in bed, less efficient sleep and an earlier "lights out" time were associated with a higher risk of dementia, especially Alzheimer's disease, over up to 11.2 years. Daily activity rhythms showed no link with dementia risk. Only 60 people developed dementia, and this observational study does not show that changing sleep habits prevents it.
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Closer Mediterranean diet adherence was associated with lower risk of cognitive impairment but not slower decline in cognitive function.
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Advance care planning is acceptable for people with dementia and their carers and is associated with improved outcomes.
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Recording of a palliative care approach for non-cancer conditions has increased since the introduction of the UK End-of-Life Care Strategy, but remains inadequate.
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Identifying brain regions associated with risk factors for dementia could guide mechanistic understanding of risk factors associated with Alzheimer disease (AD).
Why it matters
Using UK Biobank data, this cross-sectional study characterized volume changes in brain regions associated with aging and modifiable risk factors for dementia, and tested whether these volume differences were linked to cognitive performance. The goal was to better understand how risk factors for dementia might affect brain structure.
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Dementia is commonly associated with more than 1 neuropathology, usually Alzheimer disease with cerebrovascular pathology.
Why it matters
This 2019 JAMA review of dementia diagnosis and management states that dementia "is commonly associated with more than 1 neuropathology, usually Alzheimer disease with cerebrovascular pathology" — that is, Alzheimer's changes and blood-vessel damage in the brain often occur together. Our record holds only that one sentence, so it gives no figures for how common this is and no details of the review's diagnostic or treatment advice; read the original for those. It describes co-occurring brain changes, not what causes dementia.
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China has the largest population of patients with dementia in the world, imposing a heavy burden on the public and health care systems.
Why it matters
This review describes the epidemiology, clinical management and research situation for dementia in China, noting that diagnosis and management remain inadequate in many areas and that evidence for Chinese medicines is limited. It calls for better care and more research but reports no treatment that cures or prevents Alzheimer's disease.
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The program made it feasible to finance a costly treatment for patients that may benefit from it, while maintaining qualitative medical outcomes and sparing treating ophthalmologist from ethical gatekeeping dilemmas
Why it matters
This study describes a prior authorization program that let a costly eye drug be used as second-line treatment for retinal disease after a cheaper drug failed. It provides no information on treating, curing or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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The late initiation of palliative care (especially when advance care planning is lacking) and palliative care for residents without cancer, dementia or closely involved relatives deserve attention in all countries.
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59/100
Linear MR suggested that each additional hour/day of sleep was associated with 1% [95% confidence interval (CI) = 0-2%; P = 0.008] slower reaction time and 3% more errors in visual-memory test (95% CI = 0-6%; P = 0.05).
Why it matters
This genetic analysis suggested that each additional hour of sleep per day was linked to slightly slower reaction time and slightly more errors in a visual-memory test. It did not establish that changing sleep duration would prevent dementia.
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We used records of 2 784 138 patients for the calculation of cumulative incidence and of 3 872 451 patients for the calculation of period prevalence and median age at diagnosis of these conditions.
Why it matters
This paper maps when 308 physical and mental health conditions first appear across life, using records from millions of people in the English National Health Service. It is a broad descriptive resource for clinicians, policy makers, and researchers and does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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59/100
In an additional analysis stratifying the sample by weight status, the association between sleep quality and high adherence to the Mediterranean diet was observed only among normal/overweight individuals but not in obese participants.
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Because of the exploratory nature of the analyses and the small sample sizes for subgroup analysis there is the need for caution in interpreting these data.
Why it matters
In secondary analyses of 326 patients with depression in dementia, mirtazapine but not sertraline outperformed placebo in one symptom subgroup at week 13. This concerns treating depression in people with dementia, not treating, curing, or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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Over the 3-year follow-up, almost 10% of participants developed dementia and 14% were deceased.
Why it matters
In this study of lower to middle income countries, COPD was not significantly linked to dementia except in Cuba, though it was linked to a 28% higher risk of premature death. The authors suggest early death may mask dementia in these populations.
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Electroacupuncture was an effective treatment for MCI patients by improving cognitive function.
Why it matters
This meta-analysis of five randomized controlled trials with 257 patients compared electroacupuncture with Western medications for mild cognitive impairment. It suggests electroacupuncture may affect cognitive function in MCI, but the evidence comes from a small set of trials and does not establish a cure or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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The studies indicated the importance of funding, provision and organization of services/personnel, education, and cooperation among different support systems.
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After cohort matching, 48% of participants were women (n = 74 464), 61% were white (n = 93 442), and 31% (n = 48 056) were Medicare Advantage insured, with a mean (SD) age of 64 (10) years.
Why it matters
This large observational study found that incident untreated hearing loss was associated with a higher risk of dementia and other health conditions. It does not prove that treating hearing loss prevents dementia, and future studies are needed to determine if treatment could reduce risk.
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Two out of five elderly patients in general hospitals suffer from a cognitive disturbance.
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Unsupervised machine learning identifies high likelihood of dementia in population-based surveys, even without cognitive and behavioral measures and without the need of clinical diagnosis of dementia in a subsample of the population.
Why it matters
Unsupervised machine learning identified a group in population surveys with a high likelihood of dementia without needing clinical diagnosis in a subsample. It is a detection method and reports no treatment, cure, or prevention.
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Why it matters
Describes the Neighborhood Atlas, an effort to make measures of neighborhood disadvantage accessible.
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Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEIs) and memantine are commonly used in the management of dementia.
Why it matters
This meta-analysis found that pooled effects on MMSE scores favored both acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and memantine at 6 months. The effect of acetylcholinesterase inhibitors was twice as high in patients with Parkinson disease dementia or dementia with Lewy bodies compared with other dementia subtypes.
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Between 2011 and 2014, seniors experiencing health decline used various digital health technologies at low absolute rates (range: 1%-20%).
Why it matters
In this longitudinal cohort of 4,037 Medicare beneficiaries, seniors experiencing health decline used digital health technologies at low absolute rates of 1% to 20% between 2011 and 2014. Use of everyday technology decreased significantly among seniors with new-onset dementia, decreased activities of daily living, decreased short physical performance battery scores, and relocation to a nursing facility compared to seniors without comparable decline.
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Changes to everyday spoken language ("connected language") are evident in persons with AD dementia, yet little is known about when these changes are first detectable on the continuum of cognitive decline.
Why it matters
In 264 participants from the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer's Prevention, those with early mild cognitive impairment declined faster in speech fluency and semantic content than cognitively stable participants, while lexical diversity and grammatical complexity were not associated with early MCI status. The findings concern a quick, inexpensive language-based method and not treating, curing, or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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Frailty, a critical intermediate status of the aging process that is at increased risk for negative health-related events, includes physical, cognitive, and psychosocial domains or phenotypes.
Why it matters
This review describes cognitive frailty as coexisting physical frailty and mild cognitive impairment, with prevalence estimates ranging from 1.0 to 22.0% depending on setting. It reports that different cognitive frailty models may be associated with increased risk of outcomes including incidence of dementia and vascular dementia.
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.
- Modifiable Risk Factors for Prevention of Dementia in Midlife, Late Life and the Oldest-Old: Validation of the LIBRA Index
- Environmental factors and risks of cognitive impairment and dementia: A systematic review and meta-analysis
- Cerebral Microbleeds: Imaging and Clinical Significance
- Normative values of cognitive and physical function in older adults: findings from the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing
- Addition of a non-immersive virtual reality component to treadmill training to reduce fall risk in older adults (V-TIME): a randomised controlled trial
- Association of orthostatic hypotension with incident dementia, stroke, and cognitive decline
- Identification of normal and pathological aging in prospectively studied nondemented elderly humans
- Ambiguities About Discussing End of Life in the Context of Advance Care Planning in Dementia
- Head injury and the risk of AD in the MIRAGE study
- Development of DEMQOL-U and DEMQOL-PROXY-U: generation of preference-based indices from DEMQOL and DEMQOL-PROXY for use in economic evaluation