Current Alzheimer Research - Volume 11, Issue 3, 2014

A surfeit of errors and an absence of sufficiently rigorous neuroscience theory have led to failures of neuroscience drug developments and to less effective patient care. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) requires systematic grounding of drug developments with mechanistic explanations to replace current trial and error approaches to the development of potential drug products. We foresee the need for regulatory revisions that will Read More

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive decline in multiple cognitive domains and it becomes the most common cause of dementia in the elderly. There is an urgent need for the early diagnosis and treatment of AD to ease caregiver burden and medical costs, as well as improve patients’ living activities associated with the dramatic increasing number of affected individuals. Molec Read More

Objective: Myelin disruption is an important feature of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) that contributes to impairment of neuronal circuitry and cognition. In this study we characterize myelin degradation in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease compared with normal aged controls. Methods: Myelin from patients with AD (n=13) was compared to matched controls (n=6). Myelin degradation was examined by immunohistochem Read More

Current research suggests that amygdalar volumes in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) may be a relevant measure for its early diagnosis. However, findings are still inconclusive and controversial, partly because studies did not focus on the earliest stage of the disease. In this study, we measured amygdalar atrophy in 48 AD patients and 82 healthy controls (HC) by using a multi-atlas procedure, MAPER. Both hippocampa Read More

Renal disease is a risk factor for vascular diseases and for dementia, and renal insufficiency can be a feature of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Evidence has suggested that vascular mechanisms mediate the link between renal disease and dementia. Our study sought to test this hypothesis by examining renal and vascular functioning in AD by investigating estimated glomerular filtration rates (eGFR), calculated from serum cre Read More

Changes in retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness have been reported in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), the pre-dementia stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, whether RNFL thickness is associated with specific cognitive impairment of MCI patients remains unknown. Therefore, we set out to investigate the potential association between RNFL thickness and episodic memory in MCI patients. Seventy fiv Read More

Background: Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and REM Behavior Disorder (RBD) are both associated with a degeneration of ponto-medullary cholinergic pathways. Methods: We conducted a placebo-controlled, cross-over pilot trial of Rivastigmine (RVT) in 25 consecutive patients with MCI, who presented RBD refractory to conventional first-line treatments (melatonin up to 5 mg/day and clonazepam up to 2 mg/day). Results: Read More

Alzheimer´s disease (AD) is characterized by mental and cognitive problems, particularly with memory, language, visuospatial skills (VS), and executive functions (EF). Advances in the neuroimaging of AD have highlighted dysfunctions in functional connectivity networks (FCNs), especially in the memory related default mode network (DMN). However, little is known about the integrity and clinical significance of FNCs that proc Read More

Apolipoprotein E ε4 allele (ApoE4) has been associated with increased risk of sporadic Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and of conversion from mild cognitive impairment to AD. But the underlying mechanism of ApoE4 affecting brain atrophy and cognition is not fully understood. We investigated the effect of ApoE4 on amyloid beta (Aβ) protein burden and its correlation with the structure change of hippocampus and cortex, cogni Read More

Background: This retrospective cohort study was designed to assess whether there is an association between newly diagnosed dementia and the risk of stroke. Methods: From Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database of reimbursement claims, we identified 2811 patients with newly diagnosed dementia and 14,055 randomly selected, agematched patients without dementia. A Cox proportional hazards model w Read More

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common age related human neurodegenerative disorder. The major histopathological characteristics of the AD brain are extracellular amyloid-beta (Aβ) peptide loaded plaques and intraneuronal neurofibrillary tangles made of phosphorylated tau proteins. Amyloid plaques consist primarily of aggregated Aβ 1-42 and Aβ 1-40 peptides. The aim of our current study was to test novel ligands/a Read More