Journal of Alzheimer's Disease

ImportanceInterpretable scoring system can contribute to bridge the gap between the timeliness and complexity of diagnosing Alzheimers disease (AD) and promote early intervention at non-specialist settings. ObjectiveTo develop a risk score to predict the likelihood of AD with interpretable machine learning using variables that are obtainable at integrated primary care settings. DesignA secondary data analysis including cohort studies from the Alzheimers Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) a...

BackgroundNutritional factors can abet or protect against systemic chronic inflammation, which plays an important role in the development and progression of dementia. We evaluated whether higher (i.e. pro-inflammatory) Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII) scores were associated with cognitive decline in the community-based Offspring Framingham Heart Study (FHS). Method1,614 older adults (mean age 61 years [standard deviation (SD)], 9;55% women]) completed validated 126-item Food Frequency Questionn...

BackgroundSubjective cognitive decline (SCD) may be an early risk factor for dementia, particularly in highly educated individuals and women. This study examined the effect of education and sex on the association between SCD and Alzheimers disease (AD) biomarkers in non-demented older adults. MethodVanderbilt Memory and Aging Project participants free of clinical dementia or stroke (n=156, 72{+/-}6 years, 37% mild cognitive impairment, 33% female) completed fasting lumbar puncture, SCD assessme...

BACKGROUNDWe investigated effects of APOE {varepsilon}4 and its interactions with sociodemographic characteristics on cognitive measures in 2,563 South Asians from the Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia for the Longitudinal Aging Study of India (LASI-DAD). METHODSLinear regression models were used to assess the association between APOE {varepsilon}4 and global- and domain-specific cognitive function. Effect modification by age, sex, and education were explored using cross-product interaction ter...

BACKGROUNDPlasma neurodegenerative biomarkers are a potential low-cost tool for studying Alzheimers disease and dementia in population-based research, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). However, their associations with modifiable risk factors and utility as an outcome in epidemiologic studies remain unclear. OBJECTIVEOur objective was to estimate the cross-sectional association between modifiable lifecourse risk factors for dementia and plasma-based neurodegenerative biomark...

BackgroundIncreasing evidence suggests that neurodevelopmental differences substantially alter the expression and course of later-life neurodegenerative diseases. Standard approaches for determining early-life neurodevelopmental differences in aging populations rely largely on chart-based reviews, which poses a methodological challenge due to the varied quality and completeness of medical records. To overcome this limitation, we created the novel Educational & Developmental History (EDevHx) form...

Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) is recognized as a risk stage for Alzheimers disease (AD) and other dementias, but its prevalence is not well known. We aimed to use uniform criteria to better estimate SCD prevalence across international cohorts. Therefore, we combined individual participant data for 16 cohorts from 15 countries (members of the COSMIC consortium) and used qualitative and quantitative (Item Response Theory/IRT) harmonization techniques to estimate SCD prevalence. The sample com...

BackgroundDementia susceptibility likely begins years before symptoms. Early life has not been comprehensively tested for dementia associations. MethodIn the US Health and Retirement Study (normal baseline cognition; n=16,509; 2008-2018 waves), 31 exposures before age 16 were retrospectively assessed with ten-year incident cognitive status (dementia, impaired, normal). Using parallel logistic models, each exposure was tested with incident cognition, adjusting for sex, baseline age, follow-up, r...

BACKGROUNDMild Behavioral Impairment (MBI) is a neuropsychiatric syndrome describing later-life emergent apathy, mood/anxiety symptoms, impulse dyscontrol, social inappropriateness and psychosis that are not attributable to psychiatric diagnoses. MBI is an at-risk state for incident cognitive decline and dementia, and is associated with dementia biomarkers including A{beta} and neurofilament light. Thus, MBI may be an early clinical marker of neurodegenerative disease. In this study, we hypothes...

Diagnostic models using primary care routine clinical variables have been limited in their ability to identify Alzheimers disease (AD) patients. In this study we sought to better understand the effect of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) on the predictive performance of AD diagnostic models. We sourced data from the Alzheimers Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) cohort. CatBoost was used to assess the utility of routine clinical variables that are accessible to primary care physicians, such as ...

Previous research suggests that HbA1c and diabetes are unlikely to be causally related to brain health and dementia outcomes. With the availability of better genetic instruments for additional glycaemic-related markers (i.e., insulin resistance (IR), fasting glucose (FPG), fasting insulin (FI) and 2hr post-glucose (2hPG), there is scope to more thoroughly examine how diabetes-related mechanisms are causally related to specific neuroimaging brain health outcomes, and/or all-cause dementia and/or ...

The recruitment of participants for research studies may be subject to bias due to an overrepresentation of those more willing to participate voluntarily. No study has analysed the effect of genetic predisposition to Alzheimers disease (AD) on study participation. The Prospective Imaging Study of Ageing (PISA), aims to characterise the phenotype and natural history of healthy adult Australians at high future risk of AD. Participants approached to take part in PISA were selected from existing coh...

ObjectiveAlthough the association between remnant cholesterol (RC) and cognitive impairment has been reported, the association of RC with cognitive decline remains scarce. Also, the role of lipid- lowering therapy in the association is unclear. The study aimed to examine the longitudinal associations of RC with cognitive decline by lipid-lowering drug use status. MethodsThe study utilized data from wave 2 (2004-2005) to wave 8 (2016-2017) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). Glob...

Alzheimers Disease (AD) is a degenerative brain disease and is the most common cause of dementia. Despite being a common disease, AD is poorly understood. Current medical treatments for AD are aimed at slowing the progression of the disease. So early detection of AD is important to intervene at an early stage of the disease. In recent years, by using machine learning predictive algorithms, assisted clinic diagnosis has received great attention due to its success of machine learning advances in t...

IntroductionCognitively healthy older adults may experience self-perceived memory and cognitive deficits, known as subjective cognitive decline (SCD), increasing their risk for dementia- related brain and cognitive changes. This study investigated if questions from the Cognitive Change Index (CCI) and Everyday Cognition Scale (ECog) show similar associations with dementia-related changes. MethodsCognitively healthy older adults (n=332) from the Alzheimers Disease Neuroimaging Initiative were in...

IntroductionThe effect of apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype, particularly APOE {varepsilon}4, the main genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimers disease (LOAD), has been widely explored in neuroimaging studies pertaining to older adults. The goal of this systematic review was to review the literature on the relationship between carriage of the APOE {varepsilon}4 allele and grey matter (GM) changes across various age groups and its influence on neurodegeneration as evidenced by structural magn...

Early detection of {beta}-Amyloid (A{beta}) deposits in Alzheimers disease (AD) patients may enable treatment in the early stages of the disease. To date, there are no validated, specific, and non-invasive routines for early A{beta} detection which are suitable for clinical practice. Ultra-high resolution quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) at 14.1T has previously shown different contrasts in cortical areas of an AD sample that resembled distinct A{beta} spatial patterns in histological se...

ImportanceIncidence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) is rising in older adults. Dementia is a common comorbidity amongst older adults and may worsen post-TBI outcomes, but this has not been systematically studied. ObjectiveTo compare all-cause mortality following TBI or non-TBI trauma (NTT), and quantify the impacts of age, deprivation, and pre-injury dementia. DesignPopulation-based retrospective cohort study SettingElectronic health records (EHRs) from primary and secondary care Participant...

INTRODUCTIONList-learning tasks are important for characterizing memory in ADRD research, but the Uniform Data Set neuropsychological battery (UDS-NB) lacks a list-learning paradigm; thus, sites administer a range of tests. We developed a harmonized memory composite that incorporates UDS memory tests and multiple list-learning tasks. METHODSItem-banking confirmatory factor analysis was applied to develop a memory composite in a diagnostically heterogenous sample (n=5943) who completed the UDS-N...

ObjectiveThe National Institute of Health (NIH) Executive Abilities: Measures and Instruments for Neurobehavioral Evaluation and Research (EXAMINER) is a validated laptop-based battery of executive functioning tests. A modified tablet version of the EXAMINER was developed on the UCSF Tablet-based Cognitive Assessment Tool (TabCAT-EXAMINER). Here we describe the battery and investigate the reliability and validity of a composite score. MethodsA diagnostically heterogeneous sample of 2135 individ...