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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Quantitative imaging of cerebral blood flow and metabolism by positron emission tomography can differentiate between vascular dementia and degenerative dementia and show the interaction between vascular and metabolic changes.
Why it matters
This review states that lowering blood pressure, statins, neuroprotective drugs and anti-inflammatory agents have all been studied as treatments for post-stroke dementia without convincing evidence of efficacy, and that lifestyle interventions, physical activity and cognitive training have been recently tested but large controlled trials are still missing. It notes that prevention of post-stroke dementia can be achieved by prevention of stroke.
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57/100
In a single center, the ICD-9 code V66.7 had poor sensitivity and high specificity for identifying hospitalized patients who received a palliative care consultation.
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These findings suggest that non-AD, but not AD dementia, is associated with increased falls in comparison with CHIs.
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Evidence from a limited number of randomised controlled intervention trials (RCTs) have shown that a Mediterranean dietary pattern may reduce the risk of cognitive decline and enhance cognitive function among healthy older adults.
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On the eve of the 2012 summer Olympic Games, the first Lancet Series on physical activity established that physical inactivity was a global pandemic, and global public health action was urgently needed.
Why it matters
This review states that physical inactivity accounts for about 3.8% of dementia cases worldwide and that community-based activity interventions show initial promise in some countries. It reports no trial proving that increasing physical activity prevents Alzheimer's disease.
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This document presents the Movement Disorder Society Clinical Diagnostic Criteria for Parkinson's disease (PD).
Why it matters
Sets out the Movement Disorder Society criteria for diagnosing Parkinson's disease, built on motor parkinsonism defined as bradykinesia plus rest tremor or rigidity. It defines exclusion criteria, red flags and supportive features, and two levels of certainty: clinically established and probable Parkinson's.
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Advancing age is the focus of recent studies on familial and sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD), suggesting a prolonged pre-clinical phase several decades before the onset of dementia symptoms.
Why it matters
This review found that frailty indexes and physical frailty were associated with later cognitive impairment, decline, and dementia, including Alzheimer's, and proposes cognitive frailty as a combined condition in non-demented older people. It suggests that targeting frailty might help prevent dementia, but the mechanisms are described as multi-factorial and no intervention was tested.
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Nurses play a key role in the effective management of pain through the use of pain assessment tools, behavioural observation, and analgesic choice.
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The sample included dementia-free participants (mean age 40 ± 9 years; 53% women) of the Framingham Heart Study third-generation cohort with cognitive testing of memory, abstract reasoning, visual perception, attention, and executive function (n = 2,126).
Why it matters
This study looked at whether blood sugar and insulin resistance relate to thinking and brain structure in healthy young and middle-aged adults without dementia. It does not test any treatment or prevention, so it cannot show whether managing blood sugar would change dementia risk.
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Our findings in CPAP+ participants suggest that CPAP treatment of SDB may delay progression of cognitive impairment.
Why it matters
In this cohort, people with sleep-disordered breathing reached mild cognitive impairment at a younger age than those without it. Among those using continuous positive airway pressure, cognitive decline appeared to be delayed, suggesting treatment of this sleep problem may help slow impairment.
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Covert cerebrovascular disease and its consequences on cognitive and gait performance and brain atrophy are manifest in some clinically asymptomatic persons as early as the 5th decade of life.
Why it matters
This study found that in a community-representative sample, silent brain infarcts and higher volumes of white matter hyperintensity were associated with slower timed gait and worse performance on cognitive tests. It suggests that covert cerebrovascular disease may be related to early cognitive and gait decline.
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Most individuals with schizophrenia suffer some cognitive dysfunction: such deficits are predictive of longer-term functioning; and current dopamine-blocking antipsychotics have made little impact on this domain.
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Despite using more home health and hospital services than controls in the baseline preenrollment period, which suggests that they were sicker, participants receiving house calls had 17% lower overall Medicare costs than controls, and there was no indication of poorer quality of care, greater mortality, or underservice.
Why it matters
This commentary reports that participants receiving house calls had 17% lower overall Medicare costs than controls, with no indication of poorer quality of care, greater mortality or underservice. It concerns home-based care for high-cost beneficiaries, not the treatment, cure or prevention of Alzheimer's disease.
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As potential harbingers of future cognitive decline, physicians should query and monitor SMCs from their older patients.
Why it matters
In this cohort with autopsies, self-reported memory complaints were associated with increased risk of future cognitive impairment and with higher levels of Alzheimer-type brain pathology even when impairment did not occur. The authors suggest physicians should query and monitor such complaints, but this concerns prediction and monitoring, not treatment, cure, or prevention.
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The intervention is oral simvastatin 40 mg at night for 12 months, versus placebo.
Why it matters
This is a study protocol, so no results are available yet. It will test whether 12 months of oral simvastatin 40 mg at night can prevent cognitive decline in adults with Down syndrome.
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Midlife onset of diabetes may affect late-life cognition through loss of brain volume.
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The results highlight the need to integrate palliative care with optimal disease management in primary practice and to initiate advance care planning early in the chronic disease trajectory to enable all patients to live as well as possible with progressive illness and die with dignity and comfort.
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The final Dementia Screening Indicator included age (1 point/year; ages, 65-79 years), less than 12 years of education (9 points), stroke (6 points), diabetes mellitus (3 points), body mass index less than 18.5 kg/m(2) (8 points), requiring assistance with money or medications (10 points), and depressive symptoms (6 points).
Why it matters
This study developed and validated a brief screening indicator to help clinicians identify high-risk patients for cognitive screening in primary care. It is a screening tool development study and does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention.
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Knowledge on survival in dementia is crucial for patients and public health planning.
Why it matters
Using 15,209 patients from the Swedish Dementia Registry, this study compared mortality risk after a dementia diagnosis by dementia type and other factors. It is about survival after diagnosis, not about treating, curing or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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Among elderly Medicare beneficiaries with PD, race, sex, and neighborhood SES are strong independent predictors of DBS receipt.
Why it matters
Among Medicare beneficiaries with Parkinson disease, black, Asian and female patients were considerably less likely to receive deep brain stimulation surgery than white or male patients. The study also found that 18% of these surgeries were performed on patients with cognitive impairment or dementia, which is a reported contraindication.
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Many community-residing PWD and their caregivers have unmet dementia-related needs for care, services, and support.
Why it matters
In this cross-sectional study, almost all community-residing persons with dementia (99%) and their caregivers (97%) had one or more unmet needs, with a mean of 7.7 unmet needs in persons with dementia and 4.6 in caregivers. It documents unmet care needs and their correlates but does not test any treatment, cure, or prevention for Alzheimer's disease.
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In a clinical sample, patients with nonamnestic MCI were more likely to develop DLB, and those with amnestic MCI were more likely to develop probable AD.
Why it matters
In 337 people with mild cognitive impairment followed for 2-12 years at a Mayo Clinic research center, those whose main problems were not memory (for example attention or visual-spatial skills) progressed to probable dementia with Lewy bodies at about 20 per 100 person-years, versus 1.5 for those with memory problems, while the memory group progressed to probable Alzheimer's at about 17 per 100 person-years. Daytime sleepiness and subtle parkinsonism were more common at the start in those who later developed Lewy body dementia. This is a clinic-based follow-up study that helps doctors anticipate which dementia may follow; it does not predict any one person's outcome or test a treatment.
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Insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes are associated with cognitive decline and increased risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Why it matters
Among 264 people with mild cognitive impairment, those with impaired glycemia at baseline showed greater cognitive decline and progression to Alzheimer's disease over two years than those with normal glucose. This is an observational study and does not show that treating impaired glycemia prevents or treats Alzheimer's disease.
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The concept of cognitive reserve is proposed to explain the mismatch between the degree of pathological changes and their clinical manifestations and has been used to help understand the variation in the rate of cognitive decline and the development of dementias.
Why it matters
This systematic review and meta-analysis examined whether the concept of cognitive reserve, using education, occupation, and leisure activities as proxies, applies to cognitive performance and dementia in Parkinson's disease. It is about Parkinson's disease and does not test any treatment, so it says nothing about curing or preventing Alzheimer's disease.
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A technology-based format was feasible for delivering a multi-component intervention to minority family dementia caregivers.
Why it matters
This small trial gave minority family caregivers of dementia patients a technology-based psychosocial intervention delivered by videophone over 5 months. Caregivers who received it reported less burden and more social support, but the study did not test any treatment, cure or prevention of dementia itself.
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.
- Vitamin D Status and Rates of Cognitive Decline in a Multiethnic Cohort of Older Adults
- Screening for late life depression: cut-off scores for the Geriatric Depression Scale and the Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia among Japanese subjects
- Prognosis of mild cognitive impairment in early Parkinson disease: the Norwegian ParkWest study
- The temporal relationship between depressive symptoms and dementia: a community-based prospective study
- Occupational therapy practice in oncology care: Results from a survey
- The impacts of air pollution on mortality and hospital readmission among Medicare beneficiaries with Alzheimer's disease and Alzheimer's disease-related dementias: a national retrospective cohort study in the USA
- Brain behavior relationships among African Americans, whites, and Hispanics
- Measuring preferences for health states worse than death
- Effectiveness of nonpharmacological interventions for the management of neuropsychiatric symptoms in patients with dementia: a systematic review
- The Global Deterioration Scale for assessment of primary degenerative dementia