Facilitation by semantic priming in Alzheimer's disease and control groups matched for accuracy of word recognition.

1996 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Knight
2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (S1) ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
M. Ohadi ◽  
Y. Heshmati ◽  
A. Mirabzadeh ◽  
H.R. Khorram Khorshid ◽  
K. Kamali

Crucial interaction of caveolin-1 (CAV1) with beta- and gamma-secretases, and aberrant expression of the gene encoding this protein in Alzheimer's disease (AD) support a role for CAV1 in the pathophysiology of this disease.We report a novel polymorphic purine complex stretching ~150 bp of genomic DNA at the 1.5 kb upstream region of the human CAV1 gene, alleles and genotypes of which are associated with sporadic late-onset AD. Extra-short alleles were observed in the case group that were absent in the control subjects. Increased homozygosity for haplotypes was also observed at this region in the Alzheimer's cases, for those alleles and allele lengths shared by the case and control groups [(c2=30.75, df=1, p< .000, OR=4.54, CI 95% (2.56-8.3)]. This region contains GGAA and GAAA motifs, the consensus binding sites for the Ets and IRF family transcription factors, respectively, and is highly conserved in distantly-related non-human primates in respect with location and motif sequence. The effect of this complex sequence on the expression of CAV1, and the related mechanisms in the pathophysiology of AD remain to be clarified.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li-Li Chen ◽  
Hong Li ◽  
Xiao-Huan Chen ◽  
Shuang Jin ◽  
Qiu-Hua Chen ◽  
...  

We aim to investigate whether a popular hand exercise could be used to improve the action of eating in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). A 6-month intervention was conducted in 60 patients with AD who live in a nursing home. They were divided into hand exercise and control groups. Patients of the control group maintained their daily routine. The improvement of Edinburgh Feeding Evaluation in Dementia scale in hand exercise group was significantly greater than in the control group ( P = .003). Significant differences in time of autonomous eating and time of simulated eating between patients in the hand exercise and control groups ( P < .05) were noted. The improvements in accuracy of eating action and coordination of eating action from baseline were significant in hand exercise group compared to the control group ( P = .020 and .014, respectively). Hand exercise is a safe and effective intervention to improve the feeding and eating of people with AD.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 188-188
Author(s):  
Fang Yu ◽  
Dereck Salisbury ◽  
Michelle Mathiason

Abstract Aerobic exercise is widely supported as a disease-modifying treatment for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in animal models; however, its effects on cognition have been mixed in human studies, which may be attributable to inter-individual differences in aerobic fitness and cognitive responses to aerobic exercise. This study evaluated inter-individual differences in aerobic fitness and cognitive responses to 6-month aerobic exercise in participants with AD dementia by secondarily analyzing the FIT-AD Trial data. Aerobic fitness with the shuttle walk test (SWT), 6-minute walk test (6MWT), and maximal oxygen consumption (VO2max) from cycle-ergometer exercise test, and cognition with the AD Assessment Scale–Cognition (ADAS-Cog). Inter-individual differences were calculated as the differences in the standard deviation of 6-month change (SDR) in outcomes between the intervention and control groups. The sample size was 78 (77.4±6.3 years old, 15.7±2.8 years of education, 41% women). VO2max was available in 26 participants (77.7±7.1 years old, 14.8±2.6 years of education, 35% women). The results show that the SDR was 37.0, 121.1, 1.7, and 2.3 for SWT, 6MWT, VO2max, and ADAS-Cog, respectively, but there were no statistically significant differences between the intervention and control groups in these measures over six months. Our results indicate that inter-individual differences exist in aerobic fitness and cognitive responses to aerobic exercise in AD, which contributed to the favorable, but not statistically significant between-group differences in aerobic fitness and cognition. To conclude, our study is the first to demonstrate inter-individual differences in the responses to aerobic exercise in AD dementia using SDR.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xue Meng ◽  
Tao Li ◽  
Xiao Wang ◽  
Xiaozhen Lv ◽  
Zhiyu Sun ◽  
...  

Abstract Objective The objectives of this study were to investigate whether the plasma levels of oligomeric amyloid-β (OAβ) were affected in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and to examine the associations (or possible correlations) between plasma OAβ levels and memory performance. Method Thirty subjects with AD and 28 cognitively normal controls were recruited in the study. The multimer detection system (MDS) was used to measure the levels of OAβ in the plasma. In addition to assessing the general cognitive function with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (CASI), and Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale–cognitive portion (ADAS-Cog), the common objects memory test (COMT) was used to examine the episodic memory performance. Pearson’s and partial correlation analyses were conducted to explore the associations between cognitive performance and OAβ levels in the plasma. A receiving operating curve (ROC) analysis was used to discriminate between the AD and control groups. Results The plasma OAβ levels in the AD group were significantly higher than those in the control group [1.88 (0.38) ng/ml vs 1.20 (0.40) ng/ml, p < 0.001]. The elevated levels of plasma OAβ showed a strong correlation with cognitive performance in patients with AD, including an inverse correlation with scores on the MMSE (r = − 0.43, p = 0.02), CASI (r = − 0.56, p < 0.01), and the immediate recall (r = − 0.45, p = 0.01), 5-min delayed recall (r = − 0.56, p < 0.01), and 30-min delayed recall (r = − 0.71, p < 0.001) tests of the COMT, and a positive correlation with the ADAS-Cog scores (r = 0.59, p < 0.001). The EDTA plasma Aβ oligomer optical density (OD) value measured using the MDS could discriminate between the AD and control groups with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.89. The optimal sensitivity and specificity were 82.1% and 90.0%, respectively. Conclusion The elevated levels of OAβ in the plasma distinguished the AD and control groups and were associated with the severity of symptoms, especially memory performance, in patients with AD. Our results suggested that plasma OAβ could potentially be a simple and non-invasive blood-based biomarker for AD diagnosis. Furthermore, longitudinal studies are warranted to explore the application of plasma OAβ levels as a valid diagnostic biomarker in patients with AD.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Eva Mª Arroyo-Anlló ◽  
Corinne Souchaud ◽  
Pierre Ingrand ◽  
Jorge Chamorro Sánchez ◽  
Alejandra Melero Ventola ◽  
...  

Alexithymia is widely recognized as the inability to identify and express emotions. It is a construct which consists of four cognitive traits such as difficulty in identifying feelings, describing feelings to others, externally oriented thinking, and limited imaginative capacity. Several studies have linked alexithymia to cognitive functioning, observing greater alexithymia scores associated with poorer cognitive abilities. Despite Alzheimer’s disease (AD) being a neurodegenerative pathology characterized by cognitive troubles from the early stages, associated to behavioral and emotional disturbances, very few investigations have studied the alexithymia in AD. These studies have shown that alexithymia scores—assessed with Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS)—were greater in AD patients than healthy participants. The objective of the study was to investigate if the alexithymia was present in patients with mild AD. We hypothesized that the AD group would show more alexithymia features than the control group. We evaluated 54 subjects, including 27 patients diagnosed with mild AD and 27 normal healthy controls, using the Shalling Sifneos Psychosomatic Scale (SSPS-R) and a neuropsychological test battery. Using non-parametric statistical analyses—Wilcoxon and Mann–Whitney U tests—we observed that the SSPS-R scores were similar in the AD and control groups. All participants showed SSPS-R scores below to 10 points, which means no-alexithymia. We did not find significant correlations between SSPS-R scores and cognitive variables in both groups (p > 0.22), but we observed a negative association between name abilities and alexithymia, but it does not reach to significance (p = 0.07). However, a significant correlation between SSPS-R score and mood state, assessed using Zerssen Rating Scale, was found in both groups (p = 0.01). Because we did not find a significant difference in the alexithymia assessment between both subject groups, pot hoc analyses were computed for each item of the SSPS-R. We made comparisons of alexithymic responses percentages in each SSPS-R item between AD and control groups, using Fisher’s test. We observed that AD patients produced more alexithymic responses in some items of SSPS-R test than the control group, particularly about difficulties to find the words to describe feelings, as well as difficulties of imagination capacity and externally oriented thinking. The present results do not confirm our hypothesis and they do not support the results of previous studies revealing great alexithymia in AD.


Author(s):  
M. Fisman ◽  
M.I. Laskey ◽  
H.E. Enesco

ABSTRACTThe amount of liver polyploidy in a group of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) was compared with that of an age-matched control group. There was great variability in the percentage of cells in each ploidy class from one individual to the next in both control and AD subjects. AD patients had a lower percentage of 2N cells, and a higher percentage of 4N cells than the controls. There was no difference in the percentage of 8N or 16N cells in AD, indicating that there was no shift to higher ploidy classes in AD. The most stringent statistical analysis failed to reveal statistically significant differences between the AD and control groups.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. 1018-1027
Author(s):  
XinRui Shi ◽  
BeiJia Xie ◽  
Yi Xing ◽  
Yi Tang

Background: Plasma clusterin has been reported to be associated with the pathology, prevalence, severity, and rapid clinical progress of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). However, whether plasma clusterin can be used as a biomarker of AD is inconsistent and even conflicting. Objective: We conducted this study to evaluate the potential of plasma clusterin as the biomarker of AD. Method: PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane databases were systematically searched for studies on the relationship between plasma clusterin levels and AD diagnosis, risk and disease severity. We also compared the difference in Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) clusterin levels between AD and control groups. We converted and pooled data using standardized mean difference, Pearson linear regression model and the Cox regression model. Results: A total of 17 articles and 7228 individuals, including 1936 AD were included. The quality ranged from moderate to high. There was no difference in plasma clusterin between AD and control groups (SMD= 0.19 [-0.10, 0.48], p=0.20). Plasma clusterin levels were not correlated with the risk (RR=1.03 [0.97-1.09], p=0.31), the MMSE scores (R=0.33 [-0.06, 0.71], p= 0.09), and the integrated neuropsychological measurements (R=0.21 [-0.20, 0.63], p=0.31) of AD. Additionally, there was no difference in CSF clusterin between AD and control groups (SMD=1.94 [ -0.49, 4.37], p=0.12). Conclusion: Our meta-analysis suggested no relationship between plasma clusterin levels and the diagnosis, risk, and disease severity of AD and no difference in the CSF clusterin between AD and the control groups. Overall, there is no evidence to support plasma clusterin as a biomarker of AD based on the pooled results.


2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 96-102
Author(s):  
Dewan Mushfiqur Rahman ◽  
SK Mahbub Alam ◽  
Shamshad B Quraishi ◽  
Imran Sarker ◽  
Md Rafiqul Islam ◽  
...  

Background: Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia. Metals such as zinc , copper, iron are likely involved in the neurodegeneration of Alzheimer’s disease . Copper can catalyze a flux of reactive oxygen species that can damage functional and structural macromolecules in brain. Most studies found association of high serum copper level with Alzheimer’s disease but also some studies did not. Methods: Total 48 patients of Alzheimer’s disease who were diagnosed according to NIA-AA ( National institute of Aging – Alzheimer’s Association) recommendation ( revised NINCDS-ADRDA) criteria were taken as study population purposively and 42 age and sex matched control were selected. Fasting serum copper level were done for both groups. Comparison of serum copper level of Alzheimer’s patients with that of the control group were done to see association. Results : A total of 28 male and 20 female with mean age of 66.20 ± 9.42 (mean±SD) years, 22 male and 20 female with mean age of 63.54 ± 9.74 (mean±SD) years constituted as case and control groups, respectively. The mean of serum copper in case and control groups were 0.95 ± 0.37 versus 0.92 ± 0.25 mg/L (P > 0.05). The present study found that serum copper levels are non-significantly higher in patients with AD than control group, however it did not show a significant relationship with severity of dementia. Conclusion: So our suggestion was to perform a study work including total serum copper level , serum ceruloplasmin level and free serum copper level comparing between a large Alzheimer’s Disease patients group and age , sex matched apparently healthy control group to understand the copper dyshomeostasis in Alzheimer’ Disease. Bangladesh Journal of Neuroscience 2017; Vol. 33 (2): 96-102


Author(s):  
Burbaeva G.Sh. ◽  
Androsova L.V. ◽  
Vorobyeva E.A. ◽  
Savushkina O.K.

The aim of the study was to evaluate the rate of polymerization of tubulin into microtubules and determine the level of colchicine binding (colchicine-binding activity of tubulin) in the prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia, vascular dementia (VD) and control. Colchicine-binding activity of tubulin was determined by Sherlinе in tubulin-enriched extracts of proteins from the samples. Measurement of light scattering during the polymerization of the tubulin was carried out using the nephelometric method at a wavelength of 450-550 nm. There was a significant decrease in colchicine-binding activity and the rate of tubulin polymerization in the prefrontal cortex in both diseases, and in VD to a greater extent than in schizophrenia. The obtained results suggest that not only in Alzheimer's disease, but also in other mental diseases such as schizophrenia and VD, there is a decrease in the level of tubulin in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, although to a lesser extent than in Alzheimer's disease, and consequently the amount of microtubules.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeline Su Lyn Ng ◽  
Juan Wang ◽  
Kwun Kei Ng ◽  
Joanna Su Xian Chong ◽  
Xing Qian ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) cause distinct atrophy and functional disruptions within two major intrinsic brain networks, namely the default network and the salience network, respectively. It remains unclear if inter-network relationships and whole-brain network topology are also altered and underpin cognitive and social–emotional functional deficits. Methods In total, 111 participants (50 AD, 14 bvFTD, and 47 age- and gender-matched healthy controls) underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and neuropsychological assessments. Functional connectivity was derived among 144 brain regions of interest. Graph theoretical analysis was applied to characterize network integration, segregation, and module distinctiveness (degree centrality, nodal efficiency, within-module degree, and participation coefficient) in AD, bvFTD, and healthy participants. Group differences in graph theoretical measures and empirically derived network community structures, as well as the associations between these indices and cognitive performance and neuropsychiatric symptoms, were subject to general linear models, with age, gender, education, motion, and scanner type controlled. Results Our results suggested that AD had lower integration in the default and control networks, while bvFTD exhibited disrupted integration in the salience network. Interestingly, AD and bvFTD had the highest and lowest degree of integration in the thalamus, respectively. Such divergence in topological aberration was recapitulated in network segregation and module distinctiveness loss, with AD showing poorer modular structure between the default and control networks, and bvFTD having more fragmented modules in the salience network and subcortical regions. Importantly, aberrations in network topology were related to worse attention deficits and greater severity in neuropsychiatric symptoms across syndromes. Conclusions Our findings underscore the reciprocal relationships between the default, control, and salience networks that may account for the cognitive decline and neuropsychiatric symptoms in dementia.


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