Accidents & Violence, Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, JAMA, Mental Health Research / 28.03.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Madeleine Liljegren, MD Division of Oncology and Pathology Department of Clinical Sciences Lund University Lund, Sweden MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: We know from former studies including patients with a clinical diagnosis of dementia, that criminal and socially inappropriate behaviors can be signs of dementia, sometimes even the first signs of a neurodegenerative disorder. We wanted to study this relatively large (n=220) cohort of neuropathologically verified Alzheimer disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients, who had been followed clinically by specialists in cognitive medicine or geriatric psychiatry during their disease period, to see if we could confirm results from previous studies. In this paper, we further wanted to study potential differences regarding protein pathology and criminal behavior in frontotemporal dementia patients. This has, to our knowledge, never been done before. (more…)
Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, Genetic Research / 22.06.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Mikko Hiltunen, PhD Professor of Tissue and Cell Biology University of Eastern Finland School of Medicine, Institute of Biomedicine Kuopio,  Finland  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response:  We wanted to assess among the population-based METSIM (METabolic Syndrome In Men) cohort whether protective variant in APP gene (APP A673T) affects the beta-amyloid levels in plasma. The rationale behind this was that previous genetic studies have discovered that the APP A673T variant decreases the risk of having Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, the protective functional outcome measures related to this variant were lacking and thus we anticipated that the elucidation of plasma samples in terms of beta-amyloid levels would provide the much needed link between APP A673T variant and potential protective functions. (more…)
Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, Cognitive Issues / 26.01.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Craig S. Atwood Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin Madison, WI Richard L. Bowen, M.D. Private Practice, Charleston, SC Medical Research: What is the background for this study? Response: Currently, there is no treatment for Alzheimer’s disease that halts or slows its progression. Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder resulting in memory loss and impairments of behavioral, language and visuo-spatial skills. A growing body of biological, preclinical and epidemiological data suggests that the age-related changes in hormones of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis are a major etiological factor in Alzheimer disease. The changes in these hormones include not only the decline in the sex steroids, (i.e. 17-estradiol and testosterone), but the elevations in gonadotropin-releasing hormone and luteinizing hormone. In particular there are encouraging epidemiological studies involving the use of Lupron Depot which suppresses these hormones. In one such study which included hundreds of thousands of patients it was found that men who had prostate disease and were treated with Lupron Depot had a 34 to 55 percent decreased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease compared with prostate-cancer patients who didn’t receive the drug. (more…)
Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, JAMA / 10.01.2014

Maurice Dysken, MD Professor, School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry Minneapolis VA Health Care System, Minneapolis, MinnesotaMedicalResearch.com Interview Invitation Maurice Dysken, MD Professor, School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry Minneapolis VA Health Care System, Minneapolis, Minnesota MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Dysken: In patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease who were taking an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, a dosage of 2000 IU/d of vitamin E significantly slowed functional decline compared to placebo by 6.2 months over the mean follow-up period of 2.27 years.  Over this period of time caregiver time increased least in the vitamin E group compared to the other three groups (memantine alone, vitamin E plus memantine, and placebo) although the only statistically significant difference was between vitamin E alone and memantine alone.  There were no significant safety concerns for vitamin E compared to placebo and mortality was lowest in the vitamin E alone group.  It should be noted that patients who were on warfarin were excluded from the study because of a possible interaction with vitamin E that could have possibly increased bleeding events. (more…)