What Is the Link between Docosahexaenoic Acid, Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer’s Disease in the Elderly?

Author(s):  
Michel Bégin ◽  
Mélanie Plourde ◽  
Fabien Pifferi ◽  
Stephen Cunnane
2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shohei Kato ◽  
Akira Homma ◽  
Takuto Sakuma

Objective: This study presents a novel approach for early detection of cognitive impairment in the elderly. The approach incorporates the use of speech sound analysis, multivariate statistics, and data-mining techniques. We have developed a speech prosody-based cognitive impairment rating (SPCIR) that can distinguish between cognitively normal controls and elderly people with mild Alzheimer's disease (mAD) or mild cognitive impairment (MCI) using prosodic signals extracted from elderly speech while administering a questionnaire. Two hundred and seventy-three Japanese subjects (73 males and 200 females between the ages of 65 and 96) participated in this study. The authors collected speech sounds from segments of dialogue during a revised Hasegawa's dementia scale (HDS-R) examination and talking about topics related to hometown, childhood, and school. The segments correspond to speech sounds from answers to questions regarding birthdate (T1), the name of the subject's elementary school (T2), time orientation (Q2), and repetition of three-digit numbers backward (Q6). As many prosodic features as possible were extracted from each of the speech sounds, including fundamental frequency, formant, and intensity features and mel-frequency cepstral coefficients. They were refined using principal component analysis and/or feature selection. The authors calculated an SPCIR using multiple linear regression analysis. Conclusion: In addition, this study proposes a binary discrimination model of SPCIR using multivariate logistic regression and model selection with receiver operating characteristic curve analysis and reports on the sensitivity and specificity of SPCIR for diagnosis (control vs. MCI/mAD). The study also reports discriminative performances well, thereby suggesting that the proposed approach might be an effective tool for screening the elderly for mAD and MCI.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosanna Squitti ◽  
Mariacarla Ventriglia ◽  
Alberto Granzotto ◽  
Stefano L. Sensi ◽  
Mauro Ciro Antonio Rongioletti

: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a type of dementia very common in the elderly. A growing body of recent evidence has linked AD pathogenesis to copper (Cu) dysmetabolism in the body. In fact, a subset of patients affected either by AD or by its prodromal form known as Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) have been observed to be unable to maintain a proper balance of Cu metabolism and distribution and are characterized by the presence in their serum of increased levels of Cu not bound to ceruloplasmin (non-ceruloplasmin Cu). Since serum non-ceruloplasmin Cu is a biomark- er of Wilson's disease (WD), a well-known condition of Cu-driven toxicosis, in this review, we pro- pose that in close analogy with WD, the assessment of non-ceruloplasmin Cu levels can be exploit- ed as a cost-effective stratification and susceptibility/risk biomarker for the identification of some AD/MCI individuals. The approach can also be used as an eligibility criterion for clinical trials aim- ing at investigating Cu-related interventions against AD/MCI.


2001 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. González-Gross ◽  
Ascensión Marcos ◽  
Klaus Pietrzik

As the number of older people is growing rapidly worldwide and the fact that elderly people are also apparently living longer, dementia, the most common cause of cognitive impairment is getting to be a greater public health problem. Nutrition plays a role in the ageing process, but there is still a lack of knowledge about nutrition-related risk factors in cognitive impairment. Research in this area has been intensive during the last decade, and results indicate that subclinical deficiency in essential nutrients (antioxidants such as vitamins C, E and β-carotene, vitamin B12, vitamin B6, folate) and nutrition-related disorders, as hypercholesterolaemia, hypertriacylglycerolaemia, hypertension, and diabetes could be some of the nutrition-related risk factors, which can be present for a long time before cognitive impairment becomes evident. Large-scale clinical trials in high-risk populations are needed to determine whether lowering blood homocysteine levels reduces the risk of cognitive impairment and may delay the clinical onset of dementia and perhaps of Alzheimer's disease. A curative treatment of cognitive impairment, especially Alzheimer's disease, is currently impossible. Actual drug therapy, if started early enough, may slow down the progression of the disease. Longitudinal studies are required in order to establish the possible link of nutrient intake – nutritional status with cognitive impairment, and if it is possible, in fact, to inhibit or delay the onset of dementia.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Iodice ◽  
Valeria Cassano ◽  
Paolo Maria Rossini

Abstract This article reviews the main articles that have been published so far about the direct and indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on a particularly fragile population represented by the healthy elderly people as well as those with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Such populations have been among the most affected in the early stages of the pandemic due to the direct effects of the virus and numerous indirect effects now emerge and will have to be carefully assessed over time. The pandemic associated to COVID-19 has shifted most of the health resources to the emergency area and has consequently left the three main medical areas that dealing with the elderly population (oncology, time-dependent diseases and degenerative disease) temporarily “uncovered”. In the phase following the emergency, it will be crucial to guarantee to each area the economic and organizational resources to quickly return to the level of support of the pre-pandemic state. The emergency phase represented an important moment of discussion on the possibilities of telemedicine which will inevitably become increasingly important but all the limits of its use in the elderly population have to be considered. In the post-lockdown recovery phase, alongside the classic medical evaluation, the psychological evaluation must become even more important for doctors caring about people with cognitive decline.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3529-3533
Author(s):  
Ivan Todorov ◽  
◽  
Kosta Kostov ◽  

Nowadays, with the constant enhancement of the longevity of the human population, the spreading of dementia is in steady rising. Among the many different sources of progressive cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease plays a major role being the most common reason for mental decline in the elderly population. Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system that leads to progressive cognitive impairment and has severe health, social and economic tolls. The lack of effective treatment and the problems of the daily living that the disease creates for the patients and their families raises many important issues in modern times. Due to the effect on the individuals and the need for a permanent caregiver, it is of high importance to have accessible tools for early diagnostic and assessment of the ongoing treatment. Electroencephalography is a noninvasive, easily reproductive diagnostic method with low cost that can be performed in different stages of the diseases of the central nervous system and give input on the current condition. This review presents the current achievements in the field of the usage of electroencephalography and its specific findings in patients with Alzheimer's disease and the qualitative and quantitative changes that appears and are important for early diagnosis, differential diagnostic, prediction of acceleration of the pathological process, distinguishing of co-existing conditions and follow-up of the effect of the administered treatment.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. e12538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Astarita ◽  
Kwang-Mook Jung ◽  
Nicole C. Berchtold ◽  
Vinh Q. Nguyen ◽  
Daniel L. Gillen ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuek Ling Chai ◽  
Joyce R. Chong ◽  
Ainiah R. Raquib ◽  
Xin Xu ◽  
Saima Hilal ◽  
...  

AbstractCerebrovascular disease (CeVD) and neurodegenerative dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are frequently associated comorbidities in the elderly, sharing common risk factors and pathophysiological mechanisms including neuroinflammation. Osteopontin (OPN) is an inflammatory marker found upregulated in vascular diseases as well as in AD. However, its involvement in vascular dementia (VaD) and pre-dementia stages, namely cognitive impairment no dementia (CIND), both of which fall under the spectrum of vascular cognitive impairment (VCI), has yet to be examined. Its correlations with inflammatory cytokines in cognitive impairment also await investigation. 80 subjects with no cognitive impairment (NCI), 160 with CIND and 144 with dementia were included in a cross-sectional study on a Singapore-based memory clinic cohort. All subjects underwent comprehensive clinical, neuropsychological and brain neuroimaging assessments, together with clinical diagnoses based on established criteria. Blood samples were collected and OPN as well as inflammatory cytokines interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF) were measured using immunoassays. Multivariate regression analyses showed significant associations between increased OPN and VCI groups, namely CIND with CeVD, AD with CeVD and VaD. Interestingly, higher OPN was also significantly associated with AD even in the absence of CeVD. We further showed that increased OPN significantly associated with neuroimaging markers of CeVD and neurodegeneration, including cortical infarcts, lacunes, white matter hyperintensities and brain atrophy. OPN also correlated with elevated levels of IL-6, IL-8 and TNF. Our findings suggest that OPN may play a role in both VCI and neurodegenerative dementias. Further longitudinal analyses are needed to assess the prognostic utility of OPN in disease prediction and monitoring.


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