Is your brain shrinking

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Reuters

If your brain is shrinking, you are probably three times as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease in the mext ten years.

This finding was published in the journal Neurology. Also this discovery may offer a new way to detect the disease early. This advance could help in the development of effective treatments for Alzheimer's disease which affects at least 26 million people world wide.

"The magnetic resonance measurements could be very important indicators to help identify who may be at risk of developing Alzheimer's dementia," Leyla deToledo-Morrell of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

"If a drug therapy or treatment is developed in the future, those who are still without symptoms but at great risk would benefit the most from treatment," deToledo-Morrell said.

The study involved two groups of healthy people in their 70s who had brain scans at Rush University in Chicago and at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston and were followed for an average of nine years.

During the study, 50 participants remained cognitively normal and 15 developed Alzheimer's disease.

At the end of the study, people who had the highest amount of shrinkage in specific areas of the cerebral cortex were three times more likely to develop the disease.

"We also found that those who express this MRI marker of the Alzheimer's disease in the brain were three times more likely to develop dementia over the following 10 years than those with higher measurements," Dr. Brad Dickerson of Massachusetts General, who led the study, said in a statement.

"These are preliminary results that are not ready to be applied outside of research studies right now, but we are optimistic that this marker will be useful in the future," he said.

Researchers in the study used magnetic resonance imaging or MRI, equipment that is already in wide use in most hospitals.

Eli Lilly and Co, General Electric and other companies are developing special imaging agents that can detect proteins in the brain that signal the presence of Alzheimer's disease-related proteins.

But these tests read all of Is your brain shrinking

Impaired Kidney Function Linked To Cognitive Decline In Elderly

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Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

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ScienceDaily — A new study published in the medical journal Neurology suggests that impaired kidney function is a risk factor for cognitive decline in old age


The study, conducted by researchers at Rush University Medical Center, found that poor kidney function was linked specifically with cognition related to memory functions. Damage to one of these functions, episodic memory, which retrieves memories of time, place, associated emotions and other contextual knowledge, is often the earliest sign of Alzheimer's disease.

"Given the dearth of modifiable risk factors for age-related cognitive decline, these results have important public health implications," said Dr. Aron Buchman, a neuroscientist in the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center. "Further work to understand the link between kidney function and the brain may provide new strategies for preventing memory loss in elders."

Buchman said the findings suggest that there are common disease processes that affect both the brain and the kidneys in the elderly, and hypothesized that underlying vascular problems, such as diabetes and hypertension, may account for the association between kidney problems and cognitive decline.

The study analyzed data for 886 older adults who participated in the Rush Memory and Aging Project, a group of community-dwelling seniors with a mean age of 81, all of them initially free of dementia. The participants were examined annually for up to six years to track changes in cognition over time. Cognitive assessments included multiple tests that were summarized as a composite measure of overall cognition and of five individual cognitive abilities.

The individual cognitive systems assessed were visuospatial ability; perceptual speed, or the ability to quickly and accurately compare letters, numbers, objects, pictures or patterns; semantic memory, related to meaning, understanding and other concept-based knowledge; working memory, which temporarily stores and manipulates information; and episodic memory.

Ruling out the influence of factors like aging and medications, which can affect cognition, the researchers found that poor kidney function, assessed at the beginning of the study, was linked with a more rapid rate of decline in cognition over the next several years – not in visuospatial ability or perceptual speed, but in three specific areas: episodic, semantic and working memory.

The rate of decline in cognition was equivalent to that of a person seven years older at baseline, Buchman said.

The study was supported by funds from the National Institute on Aging, the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Robert C. Borwell Endowment Fund.