Dementia

Orbitofrontal Atrophy Rating Improved bvFTD Diagnostic Certainty

May 18, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring study found that orbitofrontal and frontoinsular visual rating scales on MRI helped distinguish possible from probable behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia. Key Findings bvFTD cohort: The study included 93 probable and 15 possible bvFTD patients, plus healthy controls for cross-sectional comparisons. Best regions: Orbitofrontal and …

Alzheimer’s Capillary Blood Biomarkers Correlated With Cognition

May 17, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 study in Nature Communications found that self-administered finger-prick blood tests for phosphorylated tau 217 (p-tau217), an Alzheimer’s tau marker, and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), an astrocyte-injury marker, correlated with cognition and function in older adults. Key Findings Remote sampling: Participants used capillary finger-prick blood collection rather than standard clinic-based venous blood …

NDST3 Suppression Restored Lysosomal Acidification in Alzheimer’s Models

May 15, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 study in Translational Neurodegeneration found that reducing NDST3, a microtubule deacetylase that affects lysosome acidity, restored lysosomal acidification and reduced amyloid-beta and tau pathology in Alzheimer’s cell and mouse models. Key Findings Lysosomal pH shifted back: APP695Swe-overexpressing HT22 cells had lysosomal pH near 5.6, while Ndst3 knockdown lowered it to less than …

Olfactory MRI Radiomics Linked pTau217 to Alzheimer’s Cognition

May 15, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 article-in-press study in Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy found that olfactory-region MRI radiomics, a method that turns brain scans into quantitative texture and shape features, linked blood pTau217, a tau-related Alzheimer’s disease biomarker, with cognitive impairment across three cohorts. Key Findings Three Alzheimer’s cohorts were matched: Researchers matched 122 Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients …

Oral Arginine Reduced Amyloid-Beta Pathology in Two Mouse Models of Alzheimer’s Disease

May 15, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2025 study in Neurochemistry International from Kindai University showed that oral arginine, a naturally occurring amino acid, blocked the formation of toxic amyloid-beta aggregates in lab tests and reduced amyloid pathology in two well-established mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease — with the authors flagging that the research-grade doses and methods are not equivalent …

Acute and Post-Acute Settings Initiated Most Cognition-Altering Prescriptions in Older Adults With Dementia

May 14, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 study in JAMA Network Open analyzed Medicare claims for adults 66+ from 2008 to 2021 and found that cognition-altering medications — antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, hypnotics, anticholinergics — were disproportionately initiated in emergency rooms, hospitals, and skilled nursing facilities rather than doctors’ offices, especially in dementia patients (43% of antipsychotic starts vs 22% of …

Cochrane Review of 17 Trials Found Anti-Amyloid Antibodies Made No Clinically Meaningful Difference in Early Alzheimer’s

May 14, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 systematic review in The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews pooled 17 trials of anti-amyloid monoclonal antibodies (N=20,342 people with mild cognitive impairment or mild Alzheimer’s dementia) and concluded that any effect on memory decline or dementia severity was either nonexistent or well below the threshold considered clinically meaningful for patients. Key Findings …

Plasma p-tau217 AI Models Lost Utility Across Cohorts

May 13, 2026May 12, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 medRxiv preprint found that plasma p-tau217 AI models still separated amyloid-positive from amyloid-negative people across ADNI and A4, but calibration drift made the same probabilities less dependable for clinical decisions. Key Findings Calibration drift weakened clinical utility: The study trained plasma biomarker machine-learning models in one Alzheimer’s cohort and tested them in …

Ultra-Processed Foods Eroded Visual Attention

May 15, 2026May 12, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 study in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring found that each 10% higher energy share from ultra-processed foods was associated with lower attention scores and higher modifiable dementia-risk scores in 2,192 dementia-free Australian adults. Key Findings A dementia-free midlife sample anchored the analysis: the Healthy Brain Project included 2,192 Australians …

Severe Infections Stayed Linked to Dementia After Comorbidities

May 11, 2026May 11, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 study in PLOS Medicine found that severe infections stayed linked to later dementia in Finland even after researchers accounted for a broad set of noninfectious comorbid diseases. Key Findings 62,555 dementia cases: The analysis matched Finnish adults diagnosed with late-onset dementia from 2017 to 2020 against 312,772 dementia-free controls. 29 prior hospital …

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