Dementia and Alzheimer Disease

The chief medical officer and head of Research & Development at Ovid Therapeutics spoke about the Visual Analog Scale that the company developed to help better understand the impact that potential treatments have on patients with Fragile X syndrome.

The post hoc analysis pooled data from 3 trials to evaluate the benefits of adding memantine to treatment with cholinesterase inhibitors for patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer disease.

The report includes consensus-based recommendations, which consist of guidelines for the diagnosis and staging of LATE-neuropathological change—defined by stereotypical TDP-43 proteinopathy both with or without simultaneous hippocampal sclerosis pathology, in older adults.

Researchers found that cognitively unimpaired patients with apneas had an average of 4.5% higher levels of tau in the entorhinal cortex than those who did not have apneas, after controlling for several other factors.

A prospective case controlled study looked at the relationship of retinal blood flow and vessel density to early onset Alzheimer disease and mild cognitive impairment.

The adoption of plasma NfL as a biomarker for tracking neurodegeneration would help fill a need for a less invasive, more economical biomarker.

What do you suspect is responsible for this patient’s progressively worsening cognitive symptoms?

NeurologyLive spoke with the director of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health to learn why, despite hundreds of failed trials and therapies, there is growing excitement for what's to come.

Research from the past decade suggests that sigma-1 receptors and their encoding gene, SIGMAR1, together act as a therapeutic target for patients with dementia.

Responses from 1300 physicians suggest that increasing patient load and adding ancillary services may be the key to increasing annual income.

The PEGASUS principal investigator and Translational Neurology Head of the Interdisciplinary Brain Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School spoke about the Amylyx Pharmaceuticals product’s potential in Alzheimer.

Obstructive sleep apnea may affect the accumulation of tau in the brain.

The differential diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia is complicated by its heterogenous clinical presentation, with symptoms that overlap with several other dementias.

Amylyx Pharmaceuticals announced the trial of the 2-drug combination is seeking to enroll 100 patients with late-stage mild cognitive impairment or dementia due to Alzheimer, with plans to complete the study in 2020.

Patient management 90 days after amyloid PET changed in 60.2% of patients with MCI and 63.5% of patients with dementia of uncertain etiology.

Neurology News Network for the week of March 30, 2019.

Treatment with AVP-786 in TRIAD-1 showed a significant improvement on the primary endpoint on the Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory for 1 of the 2 doses being evaluated.

The panel voted 14 to 0 against granting de novo clearance to the device.

Findings from a recent meta-analysis of the number of atypical antipsychotics available for treatment of behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia suggest that a clear trade-off exists between effectiveness and safety, with no clear winner emerging.

Eisai and Biogen have announced that the phase 3 ENGAGE and EMERGE trials, in addition to the PRIME phase 1b and EVOLVE phase 2 studies, of the monoclonal antibody, will be discontinued.

The research staff member at the IBM Research-Australia lab discussed how he and colleagues utilized machine learning to identify a set of proteins in blood that can predict the concentration of amyloid-beta in spinal fluid.

Ned Sharpless, MD, the director of the National Cancer Institute, has been named to the position of acting FDA Commissioner. The announcement was made just a week after the current commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, MD, announced his plans to resign in early April.

An immune profile in blood drawn 2 days after an ischemic stroke has been shown to predict the likelihood of the loss of mental acuity, 1 year later.

The director of the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer Disease Research Center and Mayo Clinic Study of Aging spoke about the current therapeutic landscape of Alzheimer disease, among other topics.

Neurology News Network for the week of March 9, 2019.

The 23rd FDA commissioner’s resignation is effective in about a month; his successor has not yet been named.

The pediatric critical care medicine attending physician in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia spoke about how physicians can better address brain death in pediatric patients.

According to recently published results from the SPRINT MIND trial, the jury is still out.

Neurology News Network for the week of February 23, 2019.

AED use was not significantly associated with dementia risk in patients followed by general practitioners and neuropsychiatrists, however, the potential harmful effects of levetiracetam generic brands on cognition should be further investigated.