Abstract
There has been much recent focus on the role of vitamin D in disease states including mood and cognitive alterations. In The Beneficial Role of Vitamin D in Alzheimer’s Disease, Nguyen notes that patients with Alzheimer’s disease have a high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency. Nguyen reports that links between vitamin D and Alzheimer’s disease pathology potentially include MHC class II molecules, vitamin D receptor, RAS, apoE, LXR, Sp1 promoter gene, and PARP-1, L-type voltage-sensitive calcium channels, NGF, prostaglandins, COX-2, ROS, and NOS. Nguyen believes that vitamin D may be beneficial in Alzheimer’s disease.
In Job Satisfaction and Career Commitment Among Alzheimer’s Care Providers: Addressing Turnover and Improving Staff Empowerment, Coogle et al investigated the relationship between job satisfaction and career commitment among 262 Alzheimer’s care staff working in long-term and community-based care settings. Unexpected associations were present between the extrinsic job satisfaction measure and their career planning subscale. Coogle et al conclude that there is a fundamental distinction between job satisfaction and career commitment. Implications for efforts to reduce turnover and improve staff empowerment were discussed.
Abbate et al conducted a retrospective study to investigate the accuracy of informant reports on cognitive status in mild cognitive impairment by comparing the subjective evaluation made by patients’ relatives with the objective results of neuropsychological assessment. This is important as interventions may be more effective the earlier they are implemented. All but 1 mild cognitive impairment participant’s relative noted cognitive dysfunction at the interview. The cognitive profile emerging from their reports differed from that of the neuropsychological assessment. The subjective evaluation of cognitive status based on informant reports was not able to define subtypes. A subjective evaluation of cognitive status based on informant reports may be useful to identify mild cognitive impairment.
Fels (Storytelling as a model of conversation for people with dementia and caregivers) notes that storytelling is an important method of communication because it provides topics of conversation and opportunities for connecting with others. The author applies a model of storytelling to the verbal reminiscences of older people with dementia. Their stories retain the conventional structure, suggesting that storytelling can provide a conversation model for people with dementia.
Sánchez et al (Cognitive Reserve and Lifestyle in Spanish Subjects With Sporadic Alzheimer’s Disease) conducted an elegant study that found that Alzheimer’s disease participants with low cognitive reserve exhibited greater deficits in memory, attention, and language than patients with high cognitive reserve.
Tremont et al (Use of the Telephone-Administered Minnesota Cognitive Acuity Screen to Detect Mild Cognitive Impairment) determined the sensitivity and specificity of the telephone-administered Minnesota Cognitive Acuity Screen to distinguish mild cognitive impairment from healthy controls and Alzheimer’s disease participants. As expected, Alzheimer’s disease participants obtained lower Minnesota Cognitive Acuity Screen total scores than mild cognitive impairment participants, who in turn performed worse than the healthy controls. Sensitivity was 86% and specificity was 78% for distinguishing between mild cognitive impairment and healthy controls. Sensitivity was 86% and specificity was 77% for discriminating between mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. Sensitivity was 91% and specificity was 78% for discriminating between impaired groups (mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease) and healthy controls. Their findings suggest that the Minnesota Cognitive Acuity Screen discriminate mild cognitive impairment from healthy control and Alzheimer’s disease status and has potential as an effective telephone-administered screening tool for memory disorders.
In Intonational Patterns of Nonverbal Vocalizations in People With Dementia, Samuelsson et al describes the interactional pattern of nonverbal vocalizations in a participant with late-stage dementia. The authors concluded that nonverbal vocalizations in clinical settings should be taken as communicative contributions.