In patients with severe asymptomatic carotid artery stenosis, carotid revascularization—either carotid artery stenting (CAS) or carotid endarterectomy (CEA)—added to intensive medical management (IMM) did not significantly improve cognitive function compared with IMM alone over up to 4 years. The CREST-2 randomized clinical trials included 2,366 US patients, of whom 2,165 […]
Higher functional-connectivity-derived brain age deviation was consistently associated with poorer cognitive performance—particularly working memory and executive function—and greater depressive symptoms in young and mid-life adults, while also showing links to gut microbial and metabolic signatures. In a discovery cohort of 674 participants, with replication in a cohort of 444 and […]
Higher levels of physical activity were associated with lower risks of all-cause dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and vascular dementia, but the associations differed substantially by physical activity domain. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, 74 cohort and case–control studies involving 4,227,297 participants were analyzed, with a median follow-up of 10.0 years. […]
Maintaining optimal vascular health in midlife was associated with up to 12.6 additional years of life free from dementia between ages 55 and 95. The prospective analysis of 12,409 participants from the US Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study followed for a median of 26.3 years, evaluated three major midlife […]
Restricting sugar intake during the first 1,000 days from conception was associated with a lower risk of dementia, delayed disease onset by about 2.5–2.9 years, and better brain health in later life. Using the end of UK sugar rationing in September 1953 as a natural experiment, researchers analyzed 64,737 UK […]
To reduce the risk of cognitive decline and/or dementia specifically, the WHO just released updated guidance and dementia-specific recommendations: cognitive training may be offered to older adults with normal cognition or mild cognitive impairment and engagement in cognitive stimulation may be encouraged. Engagement in social activity interventions may be recommended. […]
Older adults with higher cumulative daily cortisol levels experienced faster cognitive decline, while healthier day-to-day cortisol variability was linked to slower decline, suggesting that salivary cortisol may serve as an early biomarker of cognitive aging, although it was not associated with short-term Alzheimer’s disease (AD) risk. In this US prospective […]
A randomized controlled trial found that a ketogenic diet significantly improved metabolic health, cognitive performance, and psychiatric symptoms in people with schizophrenia-spectrum and bipolar I disorders, with improvements in depressive symptoms linked to ketosis rather than weight loss. In this study, 58 outpatients were randomized to either a ketogenic diet […]
Subjective olfactory impairment (self-reported smell loss) is consistently associated with a higher likelihood of depression, whereas objectively measured olfactory impairment is more strongly linked to depression in older adults and individuals with complete smell loss. This systematic review and meta-analysis included 23 population-based studies representing 17 independent cohorts and 187,056 […]
A secondary MRI analysis of the US POINTER randomized clinical trial found that a structured multidomain lifestyle intervention slowed the progression of cerebral small-vessel disease–related injury, as measured by white matter free water (FW), in adults aged 60–69 years, but not in those aged 70 years or older, suggesting greater […]