Alzheimer’s disease & dementia

Studies reveal that people with Down syndrome (DS) have over a 90% lifetime risk of developing dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease (AD) as they age. Research from the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering aims could uncover why some people with DS develop dementia while others do not— providing insight that could ultimately benefit the entire DS community.

People from different ethnic backgrounds may report physical symptoms rather than purely cognitive difficulties, leading to delays in the diagnosis of dementia.

In diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, specific proteins misfold and clump together, forming toxic aggregates that damage brain cells. The process of proteins spontaneously clumping is called protein aggregation and researchers have developed novel methods to generate aggregate-specific antibodies as specific probes or modulators of the aggregation process.

Up to half of all people living with Alzheimer’s Disease in Ireland remain undiagnosed. Now, a new blood test may have the potential to transform patient care, allowing for better diagnosis, earlier interventions and more targeted treatments.

A multi-task learning framework, DEMENTIA, has been developed by Prof. Li Hai and his team at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to improve the early detection and assessment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The research was recently published in the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics.

A predictive tool for determining the age at which individuals may develop mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer’s dementia (AD) has demonstrated the ability to predict MCI onset within 2.78 years and AD onset within 1.48 years.

Living in a family where there is genetic risk for dementia significantly affects choices about having children and how to parent, finds a study led by UCL researchers.

Cognitive profiles for early diagnosis of Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) have been outlined in a new study, out today in Alzheimer’s & Dementia. Although DLB is the second most common neurodegenerative dementia following Alzheimer’s Disease, it is usually misdiagnosed, preventing affected people from accessing care better tailored to their prognosis.

The average life expectancy of people diagnosed with dementia ranges from nine years at age 60 to 4.5 years at age 85 for women and from 6.5 to just over two years, respectively, in men, finds a systematic review of the latest evidence in The BMJ.