Neurobiology of Aging

Importance: Dementia is common in Parkinson's disease (PD), causing greater disability than other symptoms, but varies in timing. Although visual deficits are linked with PD dementia, how these interact with genetic factors to predict PD dementia has not been characterised. Objective: To investigate whether visual deficits and genetic factors predict PD dementia. Design: Large prospective longitudinal case-control study, mean follow-up 32.7 (SD=12.3) months. Setting: Cases were recruited between...

INTRODUCTIONAlzheimers disease (AD) diagnostic guidelines emphasize subjective cognitive decline (SCD) preceding mild cognitive impairment (MCI), implicitly assuming awareness of cognitive decline (ACD) is preserved in preclinical AD. This study aimed to evaluate associations of decreased ACD with multimodal core AD biomarkers in cognitively unimpaired (CU) individuals. METHODSWe analyzed data from CU individuals with baseline CSF biomarkers and 3-year longitudinal neuropsychological assessment...

Oscillatory coupling between respiration, heart rate, and cortical function is fundamental to physiological regulation yet remains poorly characterized in humans. Diminished respiratory heart rate variability (RespHRV)--the rhythmic heart rate modulation accompanying respiration--has emerged as a transdiagnostic biomarker of mental and physical health, reduced in anxiety, depression, cardiovascular disease, and aging (Beauchaine & Thayer, 2015; Menuet & Gourine et al., 2025). However, the cortic...

BackgroundThe relationship between hip osteoarthritis (hip OA) and Alzheimers disease (AD) presents a critical paradox within the emerging "bone-brain axis": widespread phenotypic comorbidity sharply contradicts evolutionary theories of biological antagonism. This study integrates longitudinal and multi-omic analyses to determine whether this clinical overlap masks an underlying genetic neuroprotection. MethodsWe analyzed longitudinal phenotypic data from 261,767 UK Biobank participants using C...

Alzheimers disease and related dementias (ADRD)1 and Parkinsons disease and related disorders (PDRD)2 have substantial genetic contributions, yet the role of rare damaging coding variants remains incompletely characterized at population scale3-6. We performed gene-based burden testing of rare loss-of-function and deleterious missense variants using whole-genome sequencing data from large population biobanks combined with disease-specific sequencing cohorts, leveraging proxy phenotypes to maximiz...

IntroductionThe eligibility of anti-amyloid disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) and their integration into clinical practice in some institutions requires a specific range of Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores. Reliance on this pencil-and-paper psychometric instrument imposes operational burdens and risks perpetuating health disparities due to the tests known educational and cultural biases. This study evaluates the efficacy of the Digital Clock and Recall (DCR) - a rapid, FDA-listed dig...

BackgroundLarge middle cerebral artery (MCA) infarctions can result in life-threatening cerebral edema. Quantitative brain atrophy may improve risk stratification for severe edema. We examined whether quantitative brain atrophy is associated with severe midline shift after large ischemic stroke and whether incorporating atrophy improves prediction beyond established clinical and radiographic predictors. MethodsThis was a retrospective observational cohort study of patients with [≥][1/2] MCA ...

We describe the design of the first non-pharmacological prevention trials of Parkinsons Disease worldwide: the randomised controlled Slow-SPEED trials. The three trials examine the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a gamified, remotely administered exercise intervention vs. active control program over 18-36 months in the Netherlands (n=110), United Kingdom (n=110) and United States (n=600). Each trial focuses on a complementary prodromal subgroup: isolated/idiopathic REM sleep behavioural...

Protocadherin-12 (PCDH12), a cell-adhesion protein belonging to the non-clustered protocadherin family, plays a crucial role in the establishment and regulation of neuronal connections and communication. Bi-allelic loss-of-function (LoF) variants in the PCDH12 gene have been associated with several neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) such as diencephalic-mesencephalic junction dysplasia (DMJD) syndrome, cerebral palsy, and cerebellar ataxia, often accompanied by ocular abnormalities. However, ge...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic neurodegenerative disease characterised by progressive neurological disability and heterogeneous symptom trajectories. Current clinical monitoring methods, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and episodic neurological assessments, provide limited insight into subtle disease progression and functional changes. Digital health technologies integrating multimodal biosignals and behavioural assessments may enable continuous monitoring and personalised rehab...

Background Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) has improved the diagnosis of rare genetic disorders, yet interpretation of non-coding variants that affect splicing remains challenging. In silico predictions alone are insufficient, and short-read RNA sequencing may fail to capture complex or low-abundance splicing events. Targeted amplicon-based long-read RNA sequencing (Amp-LRS) offers a cost-effective approach for functional validation of candidate splice-altering variants. Methods We applied Amp-LRS...

Background and objectives STXBP1-related disorder (STXBP1-RD), caused by pathogenic variants in the STXBP1 gene, is a rare neurodevelopmental condition, characterized by early-onset seizures, developmental delay, intellectual disability (ID), and prominent motor dysfunction. Despite the high prevalence of motor symptoms, systematic gait characterization remains limited. We therefore aimed to quantitively assess gait in individuals with STXBP1-RD. Methods In this cross-sectional study, we include...

ObjectiveTo compare early cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) cytokine profiles in intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) versus subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), with a focus on angiography-negative SAH (anSAH). MethodsWe conducted a retrospective observational cohort study of adults with spontaneous hemorrhagic stroke (ICH or SAH). For cytokine analyses, we included patients with external ventricular drains (EVDs) and analyzed the first CSF sample obtained within 72 hours of symptom onset. Cytokines were measured...

Background and ObjectivesAssociations of common infections with Alzheimer disease (AD) risk have been reported. A hypothesized mechanism to explain these is cerebral amyloid-beta (A{beta}) aggregation as a defence in response to infection, with subsequent tau accumulation. However, few studies have assessed associations of infections with tau and A{beta} pathology. We investigated associations of serological measures of several common infections with plasma p-tau217 and A{beta} status measured b...

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) affects 11.1% of the global population, underscoring the need for biomarkers that inform treatment response and glycemic outcomes. We evaluated the association between the FTO variant rs9939609-A and glycemic control in a Mexican population. A total of 174 individuals living with T2D from Merida and Sisal, Yucatan, were included, of whom 85% were receiving oral hypoglycemic agents as main treatment. Glycemic control was defined cross-sectionally as good ([≤]130 mg/dL, n=...

Background: Quantitative genome wide association studies (GWAS) primarily rely on additive linear models that compare average phenotypic differences between genotype groups. While effective for detecting common variants of moderate effect in large sample sizes, such approaches inherently reduce high resolution phenotypic data to summary statistics (group averages), potentially limiting the detection of subtle genotype phenotype relationships. Genomic Informational Field Theory (GIFT) is a recent...

Introduction: Neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) including Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), multiple sclerosis (MS), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and non-AD dementias share chronic neuroinflammatory mechanisms that contribute to neuronal injury and disease progression. While anti-inflammatory therapies (AITs) are associated with reduced neurodegenerative disease risk, knowledge regarding the impact of biological sex and treatment duration across multiple NDDs remains li...

Background: Platform trials are an efficient trial design which enable testing of multiple interventions simultaneously. They could advance knowledge of treatments for intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH). We aimed to investigate the views of clinicians involved in stroke research on recruitment to a future platform trial for ICH. Methods: Between April and July 2025, we conducted a UK-wide online survey of clinicians actively involved in stroke research using convenience sampling through professiona...

Tumour typing from whole-genome sequencing is increasingly accurate, yet molecular subtyping from somatic variants remains challenging because of tumour heterogeneity and inconsistent clinical annotations. Here, we present Mutation-Attention Dual-Task (MuAt2), a Transformer model that jointly classifies histological tumour types and subtypes directly from somatic single-nucleotide variants, indels and structural variants. MuAt2 leverages encoders pre-trained on 2,587 pan-cancer whole genomes, an...

BackgroundA coronary artery calcium (CAC) score of 0 is widely considered to indicate low short- to intermediate-term risk for coronary artery disease (CAD) and is frequently used to defer lipid-lowering therapy. However, a subset of individuals with CAC=0 still experience events, highlighting residual risk not captured by imaging alone. Polygenic risk scores (PRS) quantify lifelong inherited susceptibility, but conventional approaches rely on predefined ancestry labels despite human genetic div...