PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Imaging of a living brain can help clearly differentiate between two types of dementia

Imaging of a living brain can help clearly differentiate between two types of dementia
2021-02-05
(Press-News.org) American actor Robin Williams had a neurodegenerative brain disease called dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB): a distressing disease, with symptoms in common with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD). But unlike these two conditions, DLB also entails prominent mood and cognitive swings, sleep disorders, and vivid, sometimes terrifying, visual hallucinations. It is now thought that Robin Williams, whose diagnosis was only ascertained post-mortem, was likely driven to suicide, in 2014, by the terrifying hallucinatory experiences he suffered for years - and about which he never told anyone, not even his wife. Susan Schneider Williams recounted the tragic story in an editorial published in the journal Neurology, in 2016, under the title "The terrorist inside my husband's brain".

DLB is a relative newcomer to the dementia landscape. It is frequently confused by doctors with Alzheimer's disease, but also with Parkinson-related dementia (PDD), which may afflict a significant number of Parkinson's patients, up to 80%, on average 10 years after the onset of Parkinson's disease.

DLB was identified in 1910, when a German-born American neurologist, Frederic Henry Lewy, observed in the autopsied brains of Parkinson's and dementia patients "clumps" of an unusual protein (Alzheimer's brains also present protein clumps, but the proteins involved are different). However, only recently has Dementia with Lewy bodies been recognised as a common type of dementia. "It is the second most frequent cause of degenerative dementia in elderly people (15 to 25% of cases at autopsy)" after Alzheimer's, writes an international team - including scientists from the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown (CCU) in Lisbon, Portugal - in a new study published on February 5th 2021 in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry (a publication of the British Medical Journal group).

For several years, says Durval Costa - lead author of the new study and head of the Radiopharmacology Lab at the Champalimaud Experimental Clinical Research Programme - it was hypothesised that the use of an imaging technique called SPECT (single-photon emission computed tomography), combined with the intravenous injection of a radioactive compound, [123I]FP-CIT, should allow the distinction of dementia with Lewy bodies from Alzheimer's disease. This is due to the fact that [123I]FP-CIT binds to dopamine transporters (dopamine is a neurotransmitter) located on the membrane of dopamine-producing neurons which are very abundant in a specific part of the brain called the striatum. Since the striatal dopamine-producing neurons are depleted in dementia with Lewy bodies (just as they are in Parkinson's disease), but not in Alzheimer's disease, it was natural to assume that the pattern of distribution of this compound in the brains of patients, revealed by its radioactive emissions (captured by a special camera), would then allow doctors to visually, and in a quantitatively accurate way, distinguish DLB from AD.

The results now presented by the team have been more than twenty years in the making. "The imaging data was acquired around 1996-1999," explains Francisco Oliveira, who works in Durval Costa's Lab and is the first author of the new paper. "These patients were followed from the time of their initial clinical diagnosis (and image collection) to that of their death - in some cases, for about 20 years."

Part of the same team had already published preliminary results in 2002 in the same journal that has now released the new quantitative results. But at the time, the post-mortem material of the patient cohort was not yet fully available, so they had not been able to compare the in vivo diagnosis with the autopsy reports in a sufficient number of patients. "We did not have all the data then," notes Durval Costa. "Now we do."

And, for the first time, the autopsies confirm the imaging data with very high accuracy: the images obtained enable not only the differentiation of DLB from AD, but also of DLB from Parkinson's disease (whose corresponding [123I]FP-CIT distribution patterns are also different from one another). Going back to Robin Williams' excruciating final years, it is noteworthy that his doctors eventually gave him a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, although he and his wife were certain that something else was very wrong with him.

"To be able to quantitatively make these distinctions between diseases is crucial," says Francisco Oliveira. "These diseases may present overlapping symptoms, which makes the clinical diagnosis difficult in some cases and gives rise to a considerable percentage of misdiagnoses. Studies have shown that, frequently, patients with DLB are clinically diagnosed as AD". This could lead to patient mismanagement. The care of Alzheimer's disease patients is different from patients suffering from DLB. Patients with DLB are very sensitive to certain types of medications that should be avoided as they lead to faster deterioration and death.

"Our findings may have a significant impact both for patients and caregivers," adds Francisco Oliveira. "In addition, the selection of patients for clinical trials can now be done with more accurate biomarkers." The scientists also hope that, in the future, their quantitative technique may also help to differentiate PD patients with dementia (PDD) from patients with DLB, as they may benefit from different treatment strategies.

INFORMATION:


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Imaging of a living brain can help clearly differentiate between two types of dementia

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Repeated testing for COVID-19 is vital, economic and public health analysis shows

2021-02-05
As a new presidential administration takes steps to examine options to control the spread of COVID-19 through increased testing, epidemiologists at The University of Texas at Austin and other institutions have a new analysis that shows the value of having all people in the U.S. tested on a regular, rotating basis to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus and the loss of life from COVID-19. The team's model is outlined in a paper published online today in The Lancet Public Health. With the introduction of accurate and inexpensive rapid tests, researchers say there is an optimal testing schedule that minimizes costs as well ...

The Lancet Public Health: Weekly testing and two-week isolation most cost-effective strategy to control spread of COVID-19 in high transmission areas, US study suggests

2021-02-05
Weekly COVID-19 testing, with two-week isolation of positive cases, is the most cost-effective strategy to mitigate spread of the virus in the USA when transmission is high in affected areas until vaccines are widely available. When transmission rates are low to moderate, monthly testing and a one-week isolation period is the most cost-effective approach. Monthly population testing is more cost-effective than the current strategy of testing only people showing symptoms and their close contacts. Weekly COVID-19 testing, coupled with a two-week isolation period for positive cases, may be the most cost-effective strategy to tackle the ...

Garlic and selenium increase stress resistance in carps, says a RUDN University biologist

Garlic and selenium increase stress resistance in carps, says a RUDN University biologist
2021-02-04
A biologist from RUDN University confirmed that selenium nanoparticles and garlic extract can effectively reduce the negative impact of stress on the health of grass carp in the breeding industry. The results of his study were published in the Journal of the World Aquaculture Society. Grass carp or Ctenopharyngodon Idella is a valuable commercial fish type. In order to increase productivity, fish farms tend to breed more and more fish in small reservoirs. This extreme population density causes stress in carps that negatively affects their health, namely, reduces immunity, slows down growth, suppresses digestion, and interferes with intestinal functions. To mitigate ...

Role of cell cycle on analyzing telomerase activity with a fluorescence off-on system

Role of cell cycle on analyzing telomerase activity with a fluorescence off-on system
2021-02-04
Cancer is a significant cause of death worldwide and many efforts have been devoted to the development of methods for early detection. Telomerase are considered as a tumor biomarker for early diagnosis because the telomerase of more than 80% immortalized cells are reactivated and provides the sustained proliferative capacity of these cells, but the telomerase activity are not detectable in normal somatic cells. Telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein complex that is thought to add telomeric repeats onto the ends of chromosomes during the replicative phase (S ...

Zinc may help with fertility during COVID-19 pandemic, researchers report

2021-02-04
DETROIT - Wayne State University School of Medicine researchers have reported that zinc supplements for men and women attempting to conceive either naturally or through assisted reproduction during the COVID-19 pandemic may prevent mitochondrial damage in young egg and sperm cells, as well as enhance immunity against the virus. In "Potential Role of Zinc in the COVID-19 Disease Process and its Probable Impact on Reproduction," published in Reproductive Sciences, Husam Abu-Soud, Ph.D., associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the C.S. Mott Center for Growth and Development, ...

U.S. Air Force Academy intervention reduces unwanted sexual contact by over 40 percent

U.S. Air Force Academy intervention reduces unwanted sexual contact by over 40 percent
2021-02-04
Sexual assault and sexual harassment are significant problems in the U.S. military and military service academies in the United States. In 2018, 15.8% of female and 2.4% of male cadets and midshipmen across the military service academies reported unwanted sexual contact in the past year. This unwanted behavior can contribute to a variety of negative mental and behavioral health outcomes. While the military service academies have implemented multiple sexual assault prevention programs and social marketing campaigns to improve awareness of and response to sexual assault, prevention initiatives have been hindered by an absence of evidence ...

States with more gun laws have lower youth gun violence, Rutgers study finds

2021-02-04
Gun violence among children is lower in states with more gun laws, according to a Rutgers-led study. The study, published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, examined youth gun and weapon carrying data from 2005 and 2017 across several states. Researchers found the rates of youths carrying guns was higher in states and lower in states with more gun laws. According to researchers, this phenomenon could be associated with large urban areas and more significant safety concerns within these areas. Louisiana and Arkansas reported the highest percentages of youth reporting gun carrying behavior in 2017 and 2013 respectively, with 12.7 percent and 12.5 percent respectively. These two states had 13 gun laws in place while the lowest rates of gun carrying among ...

The strange impact of the first consumer review

The strange impact of the first consumer review
2021-02-04
If you're about to buy something online and its only customer review is negative, you'd probably reconsider the purchase, right? It turns out a product's first review can have an outsized effect on the item's future -- it can even cause the product to fail. Shoppers, retailers and manufacturers alike feel the effects of customer reviews. Researchers at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business looked at the influence of the first review after noticing the exact same products getting positive reviews on one retailer's website but negative reviews on others, said Sungsik Park, Ph.D., who studied the phenomenon ...

A personal benefit of social distancing: lower odds of getting COVID-19

2021-02-04
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Considering the greater good by social distancing during a pandemic turns out to have an attractive personal benefit: A new study has found that staying away from others also reduces an individual person's chances of contracting COVID-19. Researchers presented study participants with virtual behavior scenarios of various public settings - a grocery store, a crowded beach, a crosswalk - and asked them to place themselves or fictional people in those contexts based on their social distancing preferences. Four months later, the participants were asked if they had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection or otherwise believed they had been sick with a case of COVID-19. Statistical analyses ...

Synthesized very-long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids improved retinal function in mice

2021-02-04
Scientists like the John A. Moran Eye Center's Paul S. Bernstein, MD, PhD, know a special class of lipids, or fatty acids, found in the retina of the eye and in just a few other parts of the body play an important role in maintaining vision. But it's been difficult to study whether giving these lipids, called very-long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (VLC-PUFAs), to patients as a supplement could prevent blinding eye diseases like age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and some inherited retinal diseases. Made in the body by the ELOVL4 enzyme but rarely consumed as part of a normal diet, VLC-PUFAs weren't commercially available ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Being physically active, even just a couple of days a week, may be key to better health

High-fat diet promote breast cancer metastasis in animal models

A router for photons

Nurses and AI collaborate to save lives, reduce hospital stays

Multi-resistance in bacteria predicted by AI model

Tinker Tots: A citizen science project to explore ethical dilemmas in embryo selection

Sensing sickness

Cost to build multifamily housing in California more than twice as high as in Texas

Program takes aim at drinking, unsafe sex, and sexual assault on college campuses

Inability to pay for healthcare reaches record high in U.S.

Science ‘storytelling’ urgently needed amid climate and biodiversity crisis

KAIST Develops Retinal Therapy to Restore Lost Vision​

Adipocyte-hepatocyte signaling mechanism uncovered in endoplasmic reticulum stress response

Mammals were adapting from life in the trees to living on the ground before dinosaur-killing asteroid

Low LDL cholesterol levels linked to reduced risk of dementia

Thickening of the eye’s retina associated with greater risk and severity of postoperative delirium in older patients

Almost one in ten people surveyed report having been harmed by the NHS in the last three years

Enhancing light control with complex frequency excitations

New research finds novel drug target for acute myeloid leukemia, bringing hope for cancer patients

New insight into factors associated with a common disease among dogs and humans

Illuminating single atoms for sustainable propylene production

New study finds Rocky Mountain snow contamination

Study examines lactation in critically ill patients

UVA Engineering Dean Jennifer West earns AIMBE’s 2025 Pierre Galletti Award

Doubling down on metasurfaces

New Cedars-Sinai study shows how specialized diet can improve gut disorders

Making moves and hitting the breaks: Owl journeys surprise researchers in western Montana

PKU Scientists simulate the origin and evolution of the North Atlantic Oscillation

ICRAFT breakthrough: Unlocking A20’s dual role in cancer immunotherapy

How VR technology is changing the game for Alzheimer’s disease

[Press-News.org] Imaging of a living brain can help clearly differentiate between two types of dementia