Dementia Predicted 10 Years Before Diagnosis
Blood protein profiles predicted future dementia in healthy adults, a large longitudinal study showed. Blood samples from over 50,000 people in the U.K. Biobank showed that four proteins — glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), neurofilament light (NfL), growth differentiation factor-15 (GDF-15), and latent-transforming growth factor beta-binding protein 2 (LTBP2) — consistently were associated with subsequent […]
How Bad Will This Respiratory Virus Season Be? CDC Weighs In.
The CDC predicted that this year’s fall and winter virus season will look a lot like last year’s. “The bottom line here is we’re likely to have a similar number of total hospitalizations as we had last year,” Dylan George, PhD, director of the CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, told reporters during a […]
Post-COVID Cognitive Deficits Linked With Clotting Proteins
Two distinct blood biomarker profiles predicted cognitive deficits 6 and 12 months after COVID-19, prospective U.K. data showed. Both biomarker profiles featured proteins involved in coagulation, reported Maxime Taquet, PhD, of the University of Oxford in England, and co-authors in Nature Medicine. Among 1,800 patients hospitalized for COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic, […]
Lean body mass, age linked with alcohol elimination rates in women
The rate at which women eliminate alcohol from their bloodstream is largely predicted by their lean body mass, although age plays a role, too, scientists found in a new study. Women with obesity — and those who are older — clear alcohol from their systems 52% faster than women of healthy weights and those who […]
Ocular Capillary Ischemia Offers Early Warning of Diabetic Eye Disease Progression
An AI-driven automated optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) review system predicted progression of diabetic macular ischemia (DMI) with greater than 90% accuracy, a retrospective cohort study showed. DMI of the superficial capillary plexus at baseline more than doubled the risk of progression of diabetic retinopathy (DR), and DMI of the deep capillary plexus more than […]
Multimodal Evaluations May Flag Cardiac Allograft Problems Earlier
Coronary anatomy and physiology both predicted early cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) progression, according to a study that strengthens the case for advanced multimodal testing to improve early detection of a major contributor to allograft failure. Among heart transplant recipients at two Canadian centers, early progression of percent intimal volume (PIV) on intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) between […]
Test Predicts Transition From Normal to Impaired Cognition
The Stages of Objective Memory Impairment (SOMI) system predicted transitions from normal cognition to incident symptomatic cognitive impairment, longitudinal data showed. Over a mean follow-up of about 6 years, cognitively normal older adults with memory tests scores reflecting moderate retrieval impairment (SOMI-2) were twice as likely to progress to incident cognitive impairment as those whose […]
Dementia Risk Score Touts ‘Nearly 100%’ Predictive Accuracy
A novel clinical risk score predicted the chance of future dementia with high accuracy, but raised questions from dementia experts. Using data from nearly 450,000 people in the U.K. Biobank cohort, Xi-jian Dai, PhD, of The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University in China, and colleagues developed a practical tool to predict individual risk of […]
Persistent Olfactory Loss After COVID Predicts Cognitive Impairment
Persistent smell loss after SARS-CoV-2 infection predicted cognitive impairment in older adults, a longitudinal study in Argentina showed. One year after acute infection, anosmia was more strongly associated with cognitive impairment than severity of SARS-CoV-2 infection, reported Gabriela Gonzalez-Aleman, MSc, PhD, of Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina in Buenos Aires, at the 2022 Alzheimer’s Association International […]
Cervical Cord Atrophy Predicts Silent MS Progression
Spinal cord atrophy predicted disease progression in people with relapsing multiple sclerosis (MS), a single-center observational study showed. A 1% faster cervical cord atrophy rate was associated with 69% (P<0.0001) shorter time to silent clinical progression and a 53% (P<0.0001) shorter time to secondary progressive MS (SPMS) conversion, reported Antje Bischof, MD, of University Hospital […]