Dementia articles from across Nature Portfolio

Staging Alzheimer’s disease on the basis of the disease’s biological underpinnings might help with stratification and prognostication, both in the clinical setting and in clinical trials. We propose a staging model based on only five biomarkers, which are related to amyloid-β and tau pathologies in different ways and can be measured with a single sample of cerebrospinal fluid.

Bueichekú et al. use multimodal in vivo neuroimaging to investigate the brain characteristics of individuals presenting unawareness of memory loss who are at risk of Alzheimer’s disease due to age. They find unawareness of memory decline is an early behavioral sign that a person might develop Alzheimer’s disease.

The authors investigated associations of brain-derived-tau (BD-tau) with Aβ pathology, changes in cognition and MRI signatures. Staging Aβ-pathology according to neurodegeneration, using BD-tau, identifies individuals at risk of near-term cognitive decline and atrophy.

Two new studies show that clearance of waste, including pathogenic amyloid, through the glymphatic system is driven by synchronized neuronal activity.

Staging Alzheimer’s disease on the basis of the disease’s biological underpinnings might help with stratification and prognostication, both in the clinical setting and in clinical trials. We propose a staging model based on only five biomarkers, which are related to amyloid-β and tau pathologies in different ways and can be measured with a single sample of cerebrospinal fluid.

Clinical disease trajectories that describe neuropsychiatric symptoms were identified using natural language processing for 3,042 brain donors diagnosed with various neurodegenerative disorders. Trajectories revealed distinct temporal patterns that result in the identification of new clinical subtypes, and a subset of misdiagnosed donors.

Epidemiological studies reveal a correlation between hearing loss and the development and progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but the underlying causal mechanisms remain unclear. A study now provides experimental evidence that hearing loss can promote AD via the growth differentiation factor 1 (GDF1) pathway, which may aid in developing potential AD therapeutic strategies.

Changes in plasma levels of specific proteins could predict the development of dementia more than 10 years before clinical diagnosis.

Success in a trial of low-intensity ultrasound combined with an amyloid-β antibody represents a major stride towards integrating pharmacological and nonpharmacological approaches to reduce the amyloid-β load in patients with mild Alzheimer disease. This trial also highlights the potential of therapeutic ultrasound modalities to combat neurodegenerative diseases.