Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Two Memory Tests Accurately Predict Brain Atrophy, Alzheimer’s Disease

How many decades before your stroke hospital gives these to every stroke patient? You have to look at the actual research to see that one of the tests is the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test. Then your doctor needs specific protocols that will reverse such brain atrophy and prevent Alzheimers. That is the minimum your doctor is responsible for.  DEMAND such competence.

Two Memory Tests Accurately Predict Brain Atrophy, Alzheimer’s Disease

The use of 2 memory tests assessing episodic memory made the diagnosing of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) due to Alzheimer’s disease more precise, and the tests helped identify those individuals with an increased risk of receiving an Alzheimer’s diagnosis within the next 3 years, according to a study published in Brain Imaging and Behavior.“The use of 2 memory tests markedly improved the accuracy of the prognosis for an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis and brain atrophy in the medial temporal lobes during a 3-year follow-up period,” said Eero Vuoksimaa, MD, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. “The results highlight the importance of neuropsychological assessment as a cost-effective method of diagnosing mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease.”
The study utilised data collected in the United States under the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), comprising 230 cognitively normal individuals and 394 individuals with MCI on the basis of poor memory performance in 1 episodic memory measure, namely in story recall.
Those with MCI were further divided into 2 groups based on whether their memory performance was impaired only in 1 (story recall) or 2 (story recall and word list recall) tests.
The researchers investigated baseline differences between the groups in terms of Alzheimer’s disease cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers, finding that those who performed poorly in both episodic memory tests more closely resembled Alzheimer’s patients than those who only did poorly in the story recall test.
“During the follow-up stage, brain atrophy in the medial temporal lobes of those who only performed poorly in the story recall test did not differ from the cognitively healthy participants, whereas in those who had poor performance in both the story and word list recall tests, brain atrophy was faster,” said Dr. Vuoksimaa.
Alzheimer’s disease was diagnosed in approximately half of the participants who performed poorly in both episodic memory tests within the 3-year study period, whereas only 16% of those with a poor performance in only 1 memory test received diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Several prior studies have shown that word list recall tests predict the risk of Alzheimer’s disease as well as or even better than brain imaging or cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers.
“In this study, we employed age adjusted cut-off points for memory, which produces a diagnostic method directly adaptable to clinical use,” said Dr. Vuoksimaa. “Indeed, more comprehensive neuropsychological assessment including at least 2 episodic memory tests could be introduced as part of the health evaluation of the ageing population, particularly in cases where memory impairment is suspected.”
“Our method could also be used when selecting participants for clinical drug trials,” he added. “When looking for preventive drug therapy for Alzheimer’s disease, it would be important to be able to identify those individuals whose early cognitive impairment is due to Alzheimer’s disease.”
Reference: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11682-018-0019-6
SOURCE: University of Helsinki

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