Questions grow about the validity and usefulness of direct-to-consumer blood tests for Alzheimer’s Disease

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For the first time, peo­ple wor­ried about their risk of Alzheimer’s dis­ease can go online, order a blood test, and receive results in the pri­va­cy of their homes.

This might seem appeal­ing on the sur­face, but the devel­op­ment has Alzheimer’s researchers and clin­i­cians up in arms.

The Quest Diag­nos­tics blood test, AD-Detect, mea­sures ele­vat­ed lev­els of amy­loid-beta pro­teins, a sig­na­ture char­ac­ter­is­tic of Alzheimer’s. Intro­duced in late July, the test is tar­get­ed pri­mar­i­ly at peo­ple 50 and old­er who sus­pect their mem­o­ry and think­ing might be impaired and peo­ple with a fam­i­ly his­to­ry of Alzheimer’s or genet­ic risks for the con­di­tion. [Read more…] about Ques­tions grow about the valid­i­ty and use­ful­ness of direct-to-con­sumer blood tests for Alzheimer’s Disease

The Mindful Body argues against mindlessly accepting age-related decline in cognition and health as inevitable

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In 1979, Har­vard researcher Ellen Langer invit­ed elder­ly men to spend a week at a retreat designed to remind them of their younger days, sur­round­ed by the art, music, food, games, décor, and more from the late 1950s. After­ward, the men were test­ed and found to have made sig­nif­i­cant gains in hear­ing, mem­o­ry, dex­ter­i­ty, pos­ture, and gen­er­al well-being. It was as if being in a place sig­nal­ing their younger days made them phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly “younger.”

Maybe you, too, have had an expe­ri­ence where your mind seemed to affect your health. It turns out there’s a rea­son for that, accord­ing to Langer, author of the new book The Mind­ful Body. Your mind is not sep­a­rate from your phys­i­ol­o­gy, and chang­ing your mind­set in var­i­ous ways can lead to a hap­pi­er, health­i­er life. [Read more…] about The Mind­ful Body argues against mind­less­ly accept­ing age-relat­ed decline in cog­ni­tion and health as inevitable

Beyond the clinic: Can digital therapeutics (DTx) help boost mental health in the workforce at scale?

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Hop­ing to Avoid Pear’s Fate, Behav­ioral Health-Focused DTx Com­pa­nies Look to Employ­er Mar­ket (Behav­ioral Health Business):

The dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics (DTx) indus­try is at a cross­roads after one of the most promi­nent com­pa­nies in the space, Pear Ther­a­peu­tics, filed for bank­rupt­cy ear­li­er this year. The tur­moil comes after DTx began catch­ing on in the behav­ioral health field.

Despite Pear’s set­back, some believe there’s now a chance for oth­er dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics com­pa­nies to learn from their competitor’s mis­takes and pave the way for DTx. One of the most chal­leng­ing ques­tions for the bur­geon­ing sec­tor remains pay­ment strat­e­gy. [Read more…] about Beyond the clin­ic: Can dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics (DTx) help boost men­tal health in the work­force at scale?

Four reasons to question “new generation” monoclonal antibody Alzheimer’s drugs such as aducanumab (Aduhelm), lecanemab (Leqembi), donanemab

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New Alzheimer’s Drugs Don’t Deserve the Hype (Being Patient):

A promi­nent child­hood mem­o­ry is of my grand­par­ents liv­ing with and then dying from demen­tia. As is uni­ver­sal with demen­tia, there was a dou­ble blow: watch­ing my grand­par­ents lose their iden­ti­ty and see­ing the suf­fer­ing of those clos­est to them. [Read more…] about Four rea­sons to ques­tion “new gen­er­a­tion” mon­o­clon­al anti­body Alzheimer’s drugs such as adu­canum­ab (Aduhelm), lecanemab (Leqem­bi), donanemab

Non-invasive Transcranial Electrical Stimulation (TES) shows early promise to treat ADHD symptoms in children

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While tDCS uses con­stant cur­rent inten­si­ty, tRNS and tACS use oscil­lat­ing cur­rent. The ver­ti­cal axis rep­re­sents the cur­rent inten­si­ty in mil­liamp (mA), while the hor­i­zon­tal axis illus­trates the time-course. Source: Wikipedia.

Many chil­dren with ADHD ben­e­fit from med­ica­tion treat­ment, behav­ioral treat­ment, or their com­bi­na­tion, but oth­ers do not. In addi­tion, par­ents are often reluc­tant to start their child on med­ica­tion and high qual­i­ty behav­ioral treat­ments are not read­i­ly acces­si­ble in many areas. The long-term effi­ca­cy of these treat­ments is also less than desir­able. Thus, despite these evi­dence-based ADHD treat­ments, there is a press­ing need to devel­op nov­el treat­ments with strong research support.

A study pub­lished recent­ly in Trans­la­tion­al Psy­chi­a­try [Dakawar-Kawar et al (2023). Tran­scra­nial ran­dom noise stim­u­la­tion com­bined with cog­ni­tive train­ing for treat­ing ADHD: a ran­dom­ized sham-con­trolled tri­al.] reports promis­ing results for a nov­el ADHD treat­ment approach.

The Study:

Study par­tic­i­pants were 24 6–12 year-old chil­dren recent­ly diag­nosed with ADHD fol­low­ing a com­pre­hen­sive eval­u­a­tion. They were ran­dom­ly assigned to receive either a) a type of Tran­scra­nial Elec­tri­cal Stim­u­la­tion (TES) called Tran­scra­nial Ran­dom Noise Stim­u­la­tion (TRNS) or b) sham stim­u­la­tion; chil­dren in both groups engaged in com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing dur­ing the ses­sions. [Read more…] about Non-inva­sive Tran­scra­nial Elec­tri­cal Stim­u­la­tion (TES) shows ear­ly promise to treat ADHD symp­toms in children

“To do nothing is not an option”: The NHS Confederation releases digital mental health whitepaper

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The NHS Con­fed­er­a­tion–the mem­ber­ship organ­i­sa­tion for health­care providers in Eng­land, Wales and North­ern Ire­land– has just released a quite com­pre­hen­site 45-page whitepa­per titled Max­imis­ing the poten­tial of dig­i­tal in men­tal health.

Some of the highlights:

To do noth­ing is not an option. If we don’t make more progress we miss a key oppor­tu­ni­ty to make improve­ments to men­tal health ser­vices such as improv­ing access; pro­vid­ing ear­ly inter­ven­tion and pre­ven­tion at scale; imple­ment­ing new ways of reach­ing peo­ple; and help­ing to meet the demand sup­ply gap; and at the same time open­ing up access so that inequal­i­ties in access to health­care and sup­port for men­tal health are reduced.

[Read more…] about “To do noth­ing is not an option”: The NHS Con­fed­er­a­tion releas­es dig­i­tal men­tal health whitepaper