Vascular parkinsonism

We recently used phase-contrast magnetic resonance imaging (PC-MRI) to demonstrate an attenuated postprandial blood flow response in the superior mesenteric artery (SMA) in patients with Parkinson's disease compared to age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Since both groups showed substantial inter-individual variations, we extended the cohort of controls with a group of young individuals to investigate possible age-related effects. Seventeen healthy young subjects aged < 30 years and 17 elderly subjects aged > 50 years underwent serial PC-MRI to measure the postprandial blood flow response in the SMA after ingestion of a standardized liquid test meal (∼400 kcal)...

Exosomes are the smallest subset of extracellular signaling vesicles secreted by most cells with the ability to communicate with other tissues and cell types over long distances. Their use in regenerative medicine has gained tremendous momentum recently due to their ability to be utilized as therapeutic options for a wide array of diseases/conditions. Over 5000 publications are currently being published yearly on this topic, and this number is only expected to dramatically increase as novel therapeutic strategies continue to be developed...

BACKGROUND: Multimorbidity, the presence of two or more health conditions, has been identified as a possible risk factor for clinical dementia. It is unclear whether this is due to worsening brain health and underlying neuropathology, or other factors. In some cases, conditions may reflect the same disease process as dementia (e.g. Parkinson's disease, vascular disease), in others, conditions may reflect a prodromal stage of dementia (e.g. depression, anxiety and psychosis). AIMS: To assess whether multimorbidity in later life was associated with more severe dementia-related neuropathology at autopsy...

BACKGROUND: Many studies have reported that impaired gait precedes cognitive impairment in older people. We aimed to characterise the time course of cognitive and motor decline in older individuals and the association of these declines with the pathologies of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. METHODS: This multicohort study used data from three community-based cohort studies (Religious Orders Study, Rush Memory and Aging Project, and Minority Aging Research Study, all in the USA)...

Brain Organiods (BOs) are a promising technique for researching disease progression in the human brain. These organoids, which are produced from human induced pluripotent stem cells (HiPSCs), can construct themselves into structured frameworks. In the context of Parkinson's disease (PD), recent advancements have been made in the development of Midbrain organoids (MBOs) models that consider key pathophysiological mechanisms such as alpha-synuclein (α-Syn), Lewy bodies, dopamine loss, and microglia activation...

BACKGROUND: Catatonia is a highly prevalent syndrome in patients presenting with major neurocognitive disorders (dementia). In this study, we aim to provide a comprehensive description of the clinical and therapeutic aspects of catatonia in patients with dementia. METHOD: This descriptive study, conducted between September 2015 and June 2022, collected data from 25 patients diagnosed with dementia, out of 143 patients treated for catatonia in our specialized psychiatry department...

BACKGROUND: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a condition that affects movement and is usually seen in those over the age of 50. It is caused by the death of dopaminergic neurons, particularly in the substantia nigra. PD has shifted from being perceived as an uncommon condition to a significant neurological illness, mostly due to the increasing number of elderly individuals and the impact of environmental factors. Parkinson's plus syndromes, such as progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), multiple system atrophy (MSA), corticobasal degeneration (CBD), and vascular Parkinsonism (VaP), provide difficulties in distinguishing them clinically from PD since they have similar characteristics...

The neurovascular unit, composed of vascular endothelium, vascular smooth muscle, extracellular matrix components, pericytes, astrocytes, microglia, and neurons, allows the highly regulated exchange of molecules and the limited trafficking of cells to the brain through coordinated signaling activity. The passage of peripheral immune cells to the brain parenchyma is observed when there is clear damage to the barriers of this neurovascular unit, as occurs in traumatic brain injury. The possibility of leukocyte infiltration to the brain in neurodegenerative conditions has been proposed...

BACKGROUND: Major depressive disorder (MDD) and dementia psychiatric and neurological diseases that are clinically widespread, but whether there is a causal link between them is still unclear. In this study, bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) was used to investigate the potential causal relationship between MDD and dementia via a genome-wide association study (GWAS) database, containing samples from the European population. METHOD: We collected data on MDD and common clinical dementia subtypes from GWAS, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), Parkinson's disease with dementia (PDD), and vascular dementia (VaD)...

BACKGROUND: Ageing process and abnormal protein accumulation in dementia damage neural pathways affecting the swallowing process and leading to swallowing disorder. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the prevalence of swallowing disorder among older adults with different dementia subtypes. METHODS: We conducted a systematic search across multiple databases, including PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science and OVID Medline. The meta-analysis employed R (version 4...

Darier disease (DD) is a rare monogenetic skin disorder with limited data on its potential association with neurological disorders. This study aimed to investigate the association between DD and neurological disorders, specifically Parkinson's disease, dementias, and epilepsy. Using Swedish national registers in a period spanning between 1977 and 2013, 935 individuals with DD were compared with up to 100 comparison individuals each, randomly selected from the general population based on birth year, sex, and county of residence at the time of the first diagnosis of DD...

BACKGROUND: Apathy and depression are common neuropsychiatric symptoms across neurodegenerative disorders and are associated with impairment in several cognitive domains, yet little is known about the influence of sex on these relationships. OBJECTIVES: We examined the relationship between these symptoms with neuropsychological performance across a combined cohort with mild or major neurodegenerative disorders, then evaluated the impact of sex. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: We conducted a cohort analysis of participants in the COMPASS-ND study with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), vascular MCI, Alzheimer's disease, mixed dementia, Parkinson's disease, frontotemporal dementia, and cognitively unimpaired (CU) controls...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Rare and common GBA variants are risk factors for both Parkinson's disease (PD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). However, the degree to which GBA variants are associated with neuropathological features in Lewy body disease (LBD) is unknown. Herein, we assessed 943 LBD cases and examined associations of 15 different neuropathological outcomes with common and rare GBA variants. Neuropathological outcomes included LBD subtype, presence of a high likelihood of clinical DLB (per consensus guidelines), LB counts in five cortical regions, tyrosine hydroxylase immunoreactivity in the dorsolateral and ventromedial putamen, ventrolateral substantia nigra neuronal loss, Braak neurofibrillary tangle (NFT) stage, Thal amyloid phase, phospho-ubiquitin (pS65-Ub) level, TDP-43 pathology, and vascular disease...

BACKGROUND: Although the role of the vascular component in the pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease is widely accepted and retinal vascular abnormalities are commonly observed in Parkinson's disease patients, evidence connecting retinal vascular disorders with the risk of developing Parkinson's disease is limited. We aimed to investigate the association between retinal vascular occlusion and the risk of developing Parkinson's disease in people over 60 years using a nationwide cohort...

Neurodegenerative diseases are defined by progressive nervous system dysfunction and death of neurons. The abnormal conformation and assembly of proteins is suggested to be the most probable cause for many of these neurodegenerative disorders, leading to the accumulation of abnormally aggregated proteins, for example, amyloid β (Aβ) (Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia), tau protein (Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration), α-synuclein (Parkinson's disease and Lewy body dementia), polyglutamine expansion diseases (Huntington disease), or prion proteins (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease)...

PURPOSE: Orthostasis increases the variability of continuously recorded blood pressure (BP). Low-frequency (LF) BP oscillations (Mayer waves) in this setting are related to the vascular-sympathetic baroreflex. Mechanisms of increased high-frequency (HF) BP oscillations at the periodicity of respiration during orthostasis have received less research attention. A previously reported patient with post-neurosurgical orthostatic hypotension (OH) and vascular-sympathetic baroreflex failure had large tilt-evoked, breathing-driven BP oscillations, suggesting that such oscillations can occur independently of vascular-sympathetic baroreflex modulation...

IMPORTANCE: Dementia affects 10% of those 65 years or older and 35% of those 90 years or older, often with profound cognitive, behavioral, and functional consequences. As the baby boomers and subsequent generations age, effective preventive and treatment strategies will assume increasing importance. OBSERVATIONS: Preventive measures are aimed at modifiable risk factors, many of which have been identified. To date, no randomized clinical trial data conclusively confirm that interventions of any kind can prevent dementia...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

The effect of influenza vaccination (FluVac) on the risk of neurodegenerative diseases has not been well evaluated in prospective populations. We aimed to assess the association between FluVac and the risk of dementia and Parkinson's disease (PD) in people aged 60 years or older through a prospective population-based cohort from the UK Biobank. A time-varying Cox regression model adjusted for baseline and repeatedly measured covariates was used to estimate the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) of the association between influenza vaccination and risk of dementia/PD...