a depressed man to illustrate the question of do antidepressants really work?

Short-cuts Result in the Misdiagnosis of Dementia: It’s Terrible!

A recent study showed a high rate of misdiagnosis of dementia when using brief cognitive screening tools. Incredibly, 35.7% of patients 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 (MMSE), the Memory Impairment Screen (MIS) and animal naming…

Can of fizzy drinks, seen from above

Watch out! Artificial sweeteners increase risk for stroke and dementia!

If you consume drinks that contain artificial sweeteners 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…

Virus

Is There A Viral Cause Of Alzheimer’s?

Could Alzheimer’s disease (AD) be due to a viral cause? This idea links to the importance of olfactory impairment in the early stages of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.  A few years ago an editorial was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. Many luminaries in the field co-authored the paper. They discussed multiple studies…

Anosmia

Anosmia: When you can’t smell the roses anymore

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…

Rotten teeth

Rotten Teeth make for a Rotten Brain

Oral bacteria in Alzheimer’s brains. Rotten teeth are associated with dementia. Recently, researchers were amazed to find a seven-fold increase in bacterial counts in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The increase was mainly due to the presence of oral bacteria, the bugs that make up the microflora of the mouth.  A number of…