dementia

It comes as no surprise that a recent study showed a high error rate in the diagnosis of dementia when using brief cognitive screening tools. Incredibly, 35.7% of the sample were incorrectly classified by at least one of the three screening procedures that were examined. The researchers looked at the well known Mini-Mental State Examination…

If you have one copy of a gene called apoE4, then your chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease are more than doubled.  Even scarier, if you carry two copies of apoE4, then you have a 12-fold risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The good news is that some brilliant researchers have found a way to neutralize apoE4,…

If you consume artificially sweetened drinks in preference to those that contain sugar, you have an increased risk of having a stroke or developing dementia.  Compared to people who do not drink artificially sweetened drinks, the risk for the most common type of stroke is 2.96 times higher, and for all types of stroke the…

Recent research suggests that intermittent fasting may protect against the development of Alzheimer’s disease.  At least, this holds true in an animal model of Alzheimer’s disease studied in mice.  While suitable clinical trials have yet to be done with humans, it is probable that the animal findings are applicable to humans.  Unless you are diabetic…

The closer you live to major roads, the higher the chances are that you’ll develop Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but traffic makes no difference to your risk for Parkinson’s disease (PD) or multiple sclerosis (MS).  What a remarkable statement!!  I love research of this kind; this is epidemiology at its best, so let me share some…

Is Alzheimer’s disease caused by a viral infection? Yesterday I blogged about the importance of olfactory impairment in the early stages of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.  Today I came across a paper on the role of microbes in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) that dovetails so neatly with yesterday’s post that I just have to comment. …

Impaired sense of smell (anosmia) is an early warning sign of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s dementia, Parkinson’s disease, Korsakoff’s syndrome, Lewy-body dementia, HIV-related dementia, and multiple sclerosis.  Anosmia may occur in other conditions, too, such as diabetes.  Anosmia does not affect all patients with neurodegenerative illnesses, but it is nonetheless frequent enough to be…