Month: February 2022

CAIDE dementia risk score relates to severity and progression of cerebral small vessel disease in healthy midlife adults: the PREVENT-Dementia study

Audrey Low, Maria A Prats-Sedano, James D Stefaniak, Elizabeth Frances McKiernan, Stephen F Carter, Maria-Eleni Dounavi, Elijah Mak, Li Su, Olivia Stupart, Graciela Muniz Terrera, Karen Ritchie, Craig W Ritchie, Hugh S Markus, John Tiernan O’Brien

Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry (2022)

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jnnp-2021-327462

Summary
Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) refers to abnormalities of the small vessels of the brain. Importantly, SVD is linked to increased risk of cognitive impairment and dementia, and can appear decades before dementia onset. To understand the contribution of SVD to dementia at midlife, we examined whether a well-established dementia risk score (Cardiovascular Risk Factors, Ageing and Dementia; CAIDE) was related to SVD in healthy middle-aged volunteers in the PREVENT study. Results showed that the CAIDE dementia risk score, which is predictive of dementia 20 years later, was linked to greater midlife severity of all four SVD markers assessed, and 2-year progression of white matter lesions and systemic inflammation. While age was a strong risk factor of SVD, a higher CAIDE score amplified the effect of age on SVD. Findings highlight the value of the CAIDE score as both a prognostic and predictive marker in the context of cerebrovascular disease and related vascular cognitive impairment, and in identifying at-risk individuals who might benefit most from managing dementia risk through lifestyle modifications.

Memory assessment and dementia risk in the PREVENT Study

Mario A. Parra, Graciela Muniz-Terrera, Samuel O. Danso, Karen Ritchie, Craig W Ritchie.
Alzheimer’s & Dementia (2021)

DOI: https://doi/epdf/10.1002/alz.055104

Summary
The study assessed relational (face-name) and conjunctional (object-colour) memory markers in 183 participants from the PREVENT Dementia programme. Conjunctive measures included: the 4 Mountains test, Virtual reality supermarket task, name-face association test and the relational measure: the visual short term memory binding test were used to assess cognition. There were no significant differences in performance across different risk groups.

Measuring axial length of the eye from magnetic resonance brain imaging

Stewart J. Wiseman, Andrew J. Tatham, Rozanna Meijboom, Graciela Muniz Terrera, Charlene Hamid, Fergus N. Doubal, Joanna M. Wardlaw, Craig Ritchie, Baljean Dhillon, Tom MacGillivray
BMC Opthamology (2022)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12886-022-02289-y

Summary
The human eye supplies measurements that are increasingly used as biomarkers in studies of cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and neurological disease. One such measurement is “axial length” that essentially represents the size of the eye. Often, the length of the human eye is measured using an ophthalmological instrument, but not all studies have access to such specialized equipment. Studies of brain disease typically have access to brain scan data. The PREVENT Dementia programme has access to both. Hence, in 93 cognitively-healthy individuals from the programme (age 40 to 59 years), we measured axial length from brain MRI scans using three different image analysis software tools and compared results of our measurements to the gold standard measurements from the ophthalmic instrument. We concluded that axial length of the eye obtained from brain MRI is not a replacement for the precision of specialized ophthalmic equipment, but, in its absence, it could provide sufficient accuracy to act as a proxy.