The Lou Ruvo Center has recently opened in Las Vegas. This is a memory clinic with a large investment which impacts on the model of care. The facilities for the memory clinic are contained within a single building and these include a 3 Tesla MRI scanner, facilities for neuropsychology assessment and handheld computers for use in a streamlined process. Interestingly although the patients do not have to enrol in research their data can be compared to the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) dataset.
There is a write-up at the Schizophrenia Research Forum on some new trial data on approaches to cognitive and negative symptoms in Schizophrenia. The new approaches include the use of alpha-7 nicotinic cholinergic receptor agonists as well as a GABA-phenothiazine compound although the results from Phase III trials will be needed.
Researchers in a large multicentre trial (n=1080) investigated hallucinations in people with schizophrenia and found that there was geographical variation in the presentation of hallucinations. They suggest that this is evidence in support of cultural interactions with psychosis.
A moderately sized study (n=200) investigated gender differences in presentation of acute mania. The researchers found that there were statistically significant differences between men and women in presentation and that
‘a predominance of anxiety and depressive symptoms was found in women, whereas increased psychomotor activity was prevalent in men‘
A short small-sized trial compared risperidone and escitalopram for treatment of psychosis and agitation showed no difference in efficacy although it would be interesting to see the results of a larger longer-term replication study.
A small study showed preliminary evidence that not recognising difficulties with memory (anosognosia for amnesia) is present not only in people with Alzheimer’s Disease but also in people with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment. This was based on an assessment of 25 people with Mild Cognitive Impairment compared with 21 controls.
A systematic review examining a number of studies (with a total of 768 people with Vascular Dementia and 9857 controls) reinforced the important relationship between hypertension and increased risk of vascular dementia.
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