Depressive Symptoms Increase the Risk of Mild Neurocognitive Disorders among Elderly Chinese.

BACKGROUND: Depression is prevalent among patients with late life neurocognitive disorders but its role as an independent risk factor is not established. We aimed to examine the longitudinal relationship between depression and the incidence of mild neurocognitive disorders (NCD) in a Chinese population. METHODS: We analyzed data from 889 community-living Chinese elderly in the Singapore Longitudinal Aging Study (SLAS) cohort. All subjects were cognitively normal at baseline based on their performance on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Depression was defined as total score of 5 or more on the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale. Incident cases of mild NCD were ascertained at follow up after an average of 45 moths (range: 10-62). Odds ratios (OR) of associations were calculated in logistic regression models that adjusted for potential confounders. RESULTS: A total of 59 mild NCD cases were identified. Increased risk of mild NCD was observed for subjects who had depressive symptom at baseline (OR=2.56, 95%CI 1.17-5.60) after controlling for age, gender, education, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, heart disease, APOE genotype and length of follow-up. The interaction between depression and APOE genotype was not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: Depressive symptom was independently associated with increased risk of mild NCD among Chinese elderly. Effective management of late life depression may potentially reduce incident cases of NCD in the population.

Tea Consumption Reduces the Incidence of Neurocognitive Disorders: Findings from the Singapore Longitudinal Aging Study.

OBJECTIVES: To examine the relationships between tea consumption habits and incident neurocognitive disorders (NCD) and explore potential effect modification by gender and the apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype. DESIGN: Population-based longitudinal study. SETTING: The Singapore Longitudinal Aging Study (SLAS). PARTICIPANTS: 957 community-living Chinese elderly who were cognitively intact at baseline. MEASUREMENTS: We collected tea consumption information at baseline from 2003 to 2005 and ascertained incident cases of neurocognitive disorders (NCD) from 2006 to 2010. Odds ratio (OR) of association were calculated in logistic regression models that adjusted for potential confounders. RESULTS: A total of 72 incident NCD cases were identified from the cohort. Tea intake was associated with lower risk of incident NCD, independent of other risk factors. Reduced NCD risk was observed for both green tea (OR=0.43) and black/oolong tea (OR=0.53) and appeared to be influenced by the changing of tea consumption habit at follow-up. Using consistent non-tea consumers as the reference, only consistent tea consumers had reduced risk of NCD (OR=0.39). Stratified analyses indicated that tea consumption was associated with reduced risk of NCD among females (OR=0.32) and APOE ε4 carriers (OR=0.14) but not males and non APOE ε4 carriers. CONCLUSION: Regular tea consumption was associated with lower risk of neurocognitive disorders among Chinese elderly. Gender and genetic factors could possibly modulate this association.

Tea for Alzheimer Prevention.

The availability of empirical data from human studies in recent years have lend credence to the old axiomatic wisdom that health benefits of tea drinking extend to the area of cognition. Specifically, there is increasing interest as to whether tea drinking can delay or even prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Data from several cross-sectional studies have consistently shown that tea drinking is associated with better performance on cognitive tests. This association is supported by longitudinal data from the Singapore Longitudinal Aging Study, the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey and the Cardiovascular Health Study. The only two published longitudinal analyses on clinical outcome reported conflicting results: one study reported that mid-life tea drinking was not associated with risk reduction of Alzheimer's disease in late life while the other one found that green tea consumption reduced the incidence of dementia or mild cognitive impairment. Two small trials from Korea and Japan reported encouraging but preliminary results. While the existing evidence precludes a definite conclusion as to whether tea drinking can be an effective and simple lifestyle preventive measure for AD, further research involving longer-term longitudinal studies and randomized controlled trials is clearly warranted to shed light on this topic of immense public health interest. Biological markers of tea consumption and Alzheimer diseases should be employed in future research to better delineate the underlying mechanisms of tea drinking's protective effect on cognition.

Thyroid associated ophthalmopathy - a review.

Thyroid associated ophthalmopathy is an autoimmune disorder affecting the orbital and periorbital tissues. Hyperthyroidism is commonly associated with thyroid associated ophthalmopathy, however in 5% to 10% of cases it is euthyroid. Genetic, environmental and endogenous factors play a role in the initiation of the thyroid ophthalmopathy. Smoking has been identified as the strongest risk factor for the development of the disorder. The pathogenesis involves activation of both humoral and cell mediated immunity with subsequent production of gycoaminoglycans, hyaluronic acid resulting in oedema formation, increase extraocular mass and adipogenesis in the orbit. The natural history of the disease progresses from active to inactive fibrotic stage over a period of years. Diagnosis is mainly clinical and almost all patients with ophthalmopathy exhibit some form of thyroid abnormality on further testing. Treatment is based on the clinical severity of the disease. Non-severe cases are managed by supportive measures to reduce the symptomatology and severe cases are treated by either medical or surgical decompression. Rehabilitative surgery is done for quiescent disease to reduce diplopia and improve cosmesis.