Predicting the future: A quick, easy scan can reveal late-life dementia risk
Late-life dementia is becoming increasingly common in people after 80 years of age.
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Late-life dementia is becoming increasingly common in people after 80 years of age.
20 hours ago
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Older adults with untreated sight conditions may be at increased risk of dementia, according to a new systematic review and meta-analysis of 16 studies involving 76,373 participants.
Jun 24, 2022
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Many of us will have likely heard of music therapy and art therapy—but what about "travel therapy?"
Jun 23, 2022
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Research led by UNSW Sydney's Center for Healthy Brain Aging (CHeBA) has confirmed treating symptoms of depression is most effective when a non-pharmacological approach is adopted, in people living with dementia.
Jun 23, 2022
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Could the way a senior handles his or her money offer clues about their risk for Alzheimer's disease?
Jun 22, 2022
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More than 55 million people worldwide are believed to be living with dementia, according to the World Health Organization. And women are likely to be twice as affected by dementia as men.
Jun 23, 2022
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Previous studies have looked for links between glaucoma—a neurodegenerative disorder that's the leading cause of irreversible blindness—and cognitive function, but they've generated mixed results. Findings from a large ...
Jun 22, 2022
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Dementia (taken from Latin, originally meaning "madness", from de- "without" + ment, the root of mens "mind") is a serious loss of global cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging. It may be static, the result of a unique global brain injury, or progressive, resulting in long-term decline due to damage or disease in the body. Although dementia is far more common in the geriatric population, it can occur before the age of 65, in which case it is termed "early onset dementia".
Dementia is not a single disease, but rather a non-specific illness syndrome (i.e., set of signs and symptoms) in which affected areas of cognition may be memory, attention, language, and problem solving. It is normally required to be present for at least 6 months to be diagnosed; cognitive dysfunction that has been seen only over shorter times, in particular less than weeks, must be termed delirium. In all types of general cognitive dysfunction, higher mental functions are affected first in the process.
Especially in the later stages of the condition, affected persons may be disoriented in time (not knowing what day of the week, day of the month, or even what year it is), in place (not knowing where they are), and in person (not knowing who they, or others around them, are). Dementia, though often treatable to some degree, is usually due to causes that are progressive and incurable.
Symptoms of dementia can be classified as either reversible or irreversible, depending upon the etiology of the disease. Less than 10% of cases of dementia are due to causes that may presently be reversed with treatment. Causes include many different specific disease processes, in the same way that symptoms of organ dysfunction such as shortness of breath, jaundice, or pain are attributable to many etiologies.
Without careful assessment of history, the short-term syndrome of delirium (often lasting days to weeks) can easily be confused with dementia, because they have all symptoms in common, save duration. Some mental illnesses, including depression and psychosis, may produce symptoms that must be differentiated from both delirium and dementia.
There are many specific types (causes) of dementia, often showing slightly different symptoms. However, the symptom overlap is such that it is impossible to diagnose the type of dementia by symptomatology alone, and in only a few cases are symptoms enough to give a high probability of some specific cause. Diagnosis is therefore aided by nuclear medicine brain scanning techniques. Certainty cannot be attained except with brain biopsy during life, or at necropsy in death.
Some of the most common forms of dementia are: Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia, frontotemporal dementia, semantic dementia and dementia with Lewy bodies. It is possible for a patient to exhibit two or more dementing processes at the same time, as none of the known types of dementia protects against the others.
This text uses material from Wikipedia licensed under CC BY-SA