Tag Archives: WUSTLmed

Chronic Kidney Disease Rate Rising Faster Than Other Noncommunicable Diseases

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, MD Associate Chief of Staff for Research and Education Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System

Dr. Al-Aly

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, MD
Associate Chief of Staff for Research and Education
Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System
Institute for Public Health
Washington University, St. Louis MO

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: A lot has changed in the US over the past 15 years including aging, population growth, and increased exposure to risk factors such as obesity, elevated blood pressure, etc. With all of these changes, we wondered, how did the burden of kidney disease change in the United States over the past 15 years.
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Newer MRIs May Predict Alzheimer’s Disease Before Any Symptoms

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Cyrus A. Raji, MD PhD Asst Prof of Radiology, Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology Neuroradiology Faculty and the Neuoimaging Laboratories  Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis

Dr. Raji

Cyrus A. Raji, MD PhD
Asst Prof of Radiology, Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology
Neuroradiology Faculty and the Neuoimaging Laboratories
Washington University School of Medicine
St. Louis

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? 

Response: Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia and every patient suspected of having this disorder receives an MRI scan of the brain.

MRI scans of the brain in dementia are currently limited to evaluating for structural lesions that could be leading to memory loss such as stroke or tumor. What this study sought to accomplish was to determine if a newer type of MRI scan called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) can predict who will experience cognitive decline and dementia. We found that DTI can predict persons who will demented 2.6 years before the earliest onset of symptoms.

This study was done in 61 individuals, 30 converters and 31 non-converters, from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative and we found that DTI metrics could predict dementia 2.6 years later with 89-95% accuracy.

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