(Press-News.org) Researchers found that reports from patients and their partners about cognitive decline were associated with the accumulation of tau, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease
A new study adds further evidence that when a patient or family member notices signs of persistent memory loss, it’s important to speak with a doctor. While there are many reasons why someone’s memory may change, researchers from Mass General Brigham who are studying patients prior to diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease found changes in the brain when patients and their study partners—those who could answer questions about their daily cognitive function—reported a decline in cognition. Using imaging, the researchers found reports of cognitive decline were associated with accumulation of tau tangles—a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. Results are published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
“Something as simple as asking about memory complaints can track with disease severity at the preclinical stage of Alzheimer’s disease,” said senior author Rebecca E. Amariglio, PhD, of the Department of Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Amariglio is a clinical neuropsychologist at both Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, the founding members of Mass General Brigham. “We now understand that changes in the brain due to Alzheimer’s disease start well before patients show clinical symptoms detected by a doctor. There is increasing evidence that individuals themselves or a close family member may notice changes in memory, even before a clinical measure picks up evidence of cognitive impairment.”
The new study, led by first author Michalina F. Jadick, included researchers from across the Brigham and Mass General. The research team designed their study to include participants from the Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic AD/Longitudinal Evaluation of Amyloid Risk (A4/LEARN) and Neurodegeneration studies and the Harvard Aging Brain Study and affiliated studies. Participants were cognitively unimpaired individuals at risk but not yet diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Each participant and respective study partner completed evaluations of cognitive function for the participant. Each participant also underwent PET imaging to detect levels of tau and amyloid beta.
Across 675 participants, the team found that both amyloid and tau were associated with greater self-reported decline in cognitive function. The team also found that subjective reports from patients and their partners complemented objective tests of cognitive performance.
The authors note that the study was limited by the fact that most participants were white and highly educated. Future studies that include more diverse participants and follow participants in the longer term are needed.
Amariglio cautions that noticing a change in cognition does not mean that one should leap to the conclusion that a person has Alzheimer’s disease. However, a patient’s or family member’s concerns should not be dismissed if they are worried about cognition.
Authorship: In addition to Jadick and Amariglio, Mass General Brigham authors include Hannah Klinger (MGH), Rachel F. Buckley (MGH, BWH), Gad A. Marshall (MGH, BWH), Patrizia Vannini (MGH, BWH), Dorene M. Rentz (MGH, BWH), Keith A. Johnson (MGH, BWH), Reisa A. Sperling (MGH, BWH), Talia Robinson (BWH), and Michelle E. Farrell (BWH).
Disclosures: Marshall has received research salary support for serving as a site principal investigator for clinical trials funded by Eisai Inc., Eli Lilly and Company, and Genentech which are not related to the content in the manuscript. Johnson is a consultant for Merck and Novartis. Sperling has served as a paid consultant for AbbVie, ACImmune, Acumen, Alector, Bristol Myers Squibb, Genentech, Ionis, Janssen, Nervgen, Oligomerix, Prothena, Roche, and Vaxxinity, receives research funding from Eisai and Eli Lilly for public-private partnership clinical trials, receives grant funding from the National Institute on Aging/NIH (P01AG036694), GHR Foundation, and the Alzheimer’s Association. Johnson (spouse) reports consulting fees from Merck and Novartis.
Paper cited: Jadick MF et al. “Associations Between AU1 Self and Study Partner Report of Cognitive Decline With Regional Tau in a Multicohort Study” Neurology DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000209447
###
About Mass General Brigham
Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic health care system, uniting great minds to solve the hardest problems in medicine for our communities and the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. Mass General Brigham is a nonprofit organization committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations with several Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. For more information, please visit massgeneralbrigham.org.
END
In a new paper in Science Advances on May 29, researchers at JPMorgan Chase, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Quantinuum have demonstrated clear evidence of a quantum algorithmic speedup for the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA).
This algorithm has been studied extensively and has been implemented on many quantum computers. It has potential application in fields such as logistics, telecommunications, financial modeling and materials science.
“This work is a significant step towards reaching quantum advantage, ...
Researchers at the University of Notre Dame are developing artificial intelligence tools that help consumers understand how they are being exploited as they navigate online platforms. The goal is to boost the digital literacy of end users so they can better control how they interact with these websites.
In a recent study, participants were invited to experiment with online privacy settings without consequence. To test how different data privacy settings work, the researchers created a Chrome browser plug-in called Privacy Sandbox that replaced participant data with personas generated by GPT-4, a large language model from OpenAI.
With Privacy Sandbox, participants could ...
The Gilbert Family Foundation has awarded data scientists in the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) at the University of Colorado School of Medicine $1.2 million to develop a microscopy assay and analysis pipeline for organoids derived from patients with Neurofibromatosis 1 (NF1), a complex rare disease that causes tumors to grow along nerves and produces a range of symptoms.
The project will help researchers develop more treatments for the disease, says DBMI assistant professor Gregory ...
When desert winds stir up dust from the Salton Sea’s exposed lakebed, nearby communities suffer from increased air pollution. The deterioration coincides with reduced flows into California’s largest lake, a new research paper in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics finds.
Disadvantaged communities have been affected more than others in the areas near the Salton Sea, which has been shrinking for years, said the paper’s co-leading author Eric Edwards. He is an assistant professor of agricultural economics at University of California, Davis, who did the research while at North Carolina State University.
“We ...
UCLA biologists have some good news and some bad news for lovers of urban wildlife in Los Angeles. The good news? Unexpected pockets of biodiversity pepper the city. The bad news? It will be a challenge to elevate the level of overall biodiversity of the city. Of all the major taxonomic groups studied, only snails and slugs are ‘easy’ to find in Los Angeles, probably because of the abundance of landscaping, gardens and irrigation.
The research points toward ways Angelenos — and people elsewhere — can make their city more hospitable not only to urban-tolerant species such as coyotes, but also to species that usually ...
Most native species avoid more urbanized areas of Los Angeles, but slugs and snails may actually prefer these environments, according to a study publishing May 29 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Joseph Curti from the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues.
Urban areas continue to grow around the world, putting pressure on native species that find it difficult to tolerate the habitat changes and pollution it brings. To conserve and even increase biodiversity in cities, scientists and city planners need large-scale data on the ecological communities present, but this is time consuming and difficult to collect. Researchers used data from iNaturalist, a large ...
New simulations provide mathematical support for the theory that the spread of political ideas across international borders may have a big impact on election outcomes, and that small actions boosting a minority idea can gradually lead to global-scale political change. Jose Segovia-Martin and Óscar Rivero present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on May 29.
People in many regions around the world are increasingly exposed to international information—such as news and opinions shared via social media—allowing for the possibility of ...
The YouTube comments sections of politically neutral news outlets might be more conducive to cooperative, cross-partisan conversation than their liberal and conservative counterparts, according to a study published May 29, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Seung Woo Chae and Sung Hyun Lee from Indiana University. The study, which focused on the media response to the 2019 release of the Mueller report, found that more cross-partisan discussions took place on liberal channels than conservative ones and mainstream news outlets hosted more cross-partisan ...
In the first large-scale observation with human coding of infant vocalizations using all-day home recordings, babies of all ages from birth up to a year old squealed and growled in significant cluster patterns, suggesting the babies may have been actively engaged in noisemaking play and sound practice, according to a study published May 29, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hyunjoo Yoo from the University of Alabama, Pumpki Lei Su from the University of Texas at Dallas, and colleagues.
In their first year of life, babies spend a remarkable amount of time vocalizing—both responding with noises to parents and caregivers, as well as self-directed babbling that could ...
The sweat bee, H. rubicundus, is less sociable in Scotland than in Cornwall, but is genetically differentiated and genetically isolated too
###
Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0302688
Article Title: Genetic differentiation at extreme latitudes in the socially plastic sweat bee Halictus rubicundus
Author Countries: Netherlands, UK
Funding: This work is part of a project that received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Horizon's 202 research and innovation programme (grantagreement no. 695744). RAB was funded by a Wageningen Graduate School Postdoctoral Talent fellowship and a BBSRC discovery ...
