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

By Judith Graham @ Kaiser Health News | October 19, 2023

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…

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Study: High Cognitive Reserve (CR) seen to significantly lower dementia risk even in the presence of high Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) neuropathology

By SharpBrains | October 5, 2020

Lifes­pan Cog­ni­tive Reserve—A Secret to Cop­ing With Neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive Pathol­o­gy (JAMA Neu­rol­o­gy edi­to­r­i­al): Giv­en the lim­it­ed suc­cess of ther­a­peu­tic inter­ven­tions for Alzheimer dis­ease, there is increased inter­est in under­stand­ing whether mod­i­fi­able fac­tors can help cope with or post­pone the appear­ance of brain pathol­o­gy. It is esti­mat­ed that about 35% of Alzheimer risk is mod­i­fi­able. Epi­demi­o­log­ic studies…

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Q: What do people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety have in common? A: A brain with similar gray-matter loss

By SharpBrains | February 6, 2015

. Dif­fer­ent men­tal dis­or­ders cause same brain-mat­ter loss, study finds (press release): “A meta-ana­ly­­sis of 193 brain-imag­ing stud­ies shows sim­i­lar gray-mat­ter loss in the brains of peo­ple with diag­noses as dif­fer­ent as schiz­o­phre­nia, depres­sion and addiction…The find­ings call into ques­tion a long­stand­ing ten­den­cy to dis­tin­guish psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders chiefly by their symp­toms rather than their underlying…

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