An US prospective cohort study revealed that orthostatic hypotension (OH) in midlife was independently associated with incident dementia and ischemic stroke. The study included 11,709 participants without a history of coronary heart disease or stroke at the baseline examination (1987–1989, mean age 54). OH was defined as a drop in […]
A US prospective clinical-pathologic study revealed that late in life both higher average and faster decline in blood pressure (BP) are related to cardiovascular and/or Alzheimer disease (AD). The study included 1,288 persons (mean age at death = 88.6 years; 65% women, mean follow-up 8 years). Each participant had BP […]
An ongoing study in the UK revealed that systolic blood pressure (SBP) ≥130 mmHg at age 50 is associated with increased risk of dementia, independent of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Systolic and diastolic blood pressure were measured on 8639 persons (32.5% women) in 1985, 1991, 1997, and 2003. Incidence of dementia (n […]
A systematic review found that exercising for at least 52 hours (averaging about an hour, 3 times a week) is associated with improved cognitive performance in older adults with and without cognitive impairment. Another population-based study in Chinese suggested that active participation in intellectual activities might help prevent dementia in […]
A prospective cohort study in the US revealed that greater depressive symptoms were associated with worse episodic memory, smaller cerebral volume, and silent infarcts. The study included 1,111 stroke-free older adults with an average age of 71 between 2003 and 2008, 52% were Caribbean Hispanic. 22% of participants had greater […]
A genome-wide association meta-analysis identified 44 independent and significant loci associated with major depression. The analysis was based in 135,458 cases and 344,901 controls. Lower educational attainment and higher body mass were putatively causal, whereas major depression and schizophrenia reflected a partly shared biological etiology. All humans carry lesser or […]
A cohort study in the US suggested prenatal selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) exposure was associated with changes in fetal brain structure and activity, particularly in brain regions critical to emotional processing. The study included 98 infants: 16 with in utero SSRI exposure, 21 with in utero untreated maternal depression […]
Antidepressants have helped millions of people ease depression and anxiety, but they are not harmless. Many people stop the medications without significant trouble. Some people have significant withdrawal symptoms, and make tiny reductions over a long period of time may help to quit. The drugs initially were approved for short-term […]
A systematic review and network meta-analysis concluded that all 21 antidepressants were more efficacious than placebo in adults with major depressive disorder. Smaller differences between active drugs were found when placebo-controlled trials were included in the analysis, whereas there was more variability in efficacy (response rate) and acceptability (treatment discontinuations […]
A transcriptomic profiling analysis revealed that there were shared and distinct gene-expression patterns across five major psychiatric disorders—autism (ASD), schizophrenia (SCZ), bipolar disorder (BD), depression (MDD), and alcoholism (AAD)—compared with matched controls. Brain transcriptomes—a quantitative, genome-wide molecular phenotype—were performed using 700 cerebral cortical samples from subjects with ASD (n = […]