A cross-sectional study of the effects of age, education, and gender on the Boston Naming Test.

The effects of age, education, and gender on visual confrontation naming using the 60-item Boston Naming Test (BNT) were studied in 1111 "normal" elderly (ages 50-101) and 61 younger adults (ages 20-49). Significantly poorer mean BNT scores and increasing variability (measured in standard deviations) were found with successively older age groups and with lower educational levels even after stratification on the demographic variables. There was a non-significant trend for males to score slightly higher than females. Age declines on the BNT were considerably greater for this cross-sectional data than for the longitudinal data we previously reported.

Normative data stratified for age, education, and gender on the Boston Naming Test.

Stratified normative data for age, education, and gender are provided for the 60-item Boston Naming Test (BNT) on 1026 older participants ages 50-95 years using overlapping age ranges. Tables are presented that convert BNT raw scores to scaled scores and percentiles. Mild dementia cases were eliminated using a comprehensive cognitive battery. In a companion paper we found significantly poorer mean BNT scores and increasing variability with successively older age groups and decreasing educational levels indicating the need for demographically stratified normative data when determining an individual's degree of impairment. These norms should be clinically useful when assessing suspected dementia cases.

Prevention of noise- and drug-induced hearing loss with D-methionine.

A number of otoprotective agents are currently being investigated. Various types of agents have been found in animal studies to protect against hearing loss induced by cisplatin, carboplatin, aminoglycosides, or noise exposure. For over a decade we have been investigating D-methionine (D-met) as an otoprotective agent. Studies in our laboratory and others around the world have documented D-met's otoprotective action, in a variety of species, against a variety of ototoxic insults including cisplatin-, carboplatin-, aminoglycoside- and noise-induced auditory threshold elevations and cochlear hair cell loss. For cisplatin-induced ototoxicity, protection of the stria vascularis has also been documented. Further D-met has an excellent safety profile. D-met may act as both a direct and indirect antioxidant. In this report, we provide the results of three experiments, expanding findings in D-met protection in three of our translational research areas: protection from platinum based chemotherapy-, aminoglycoside- and noise-induced hearing loss. These experiments demonstrate oral D-met protection against cisplatin-induced ototoxicity, D-met protection against amikacin-induced ototoxicity, and D-met rescue from permanent noise-induced hearing loss when D-met is initiated 1h after noise exposure. These studies demonstrate some of the animal experiments needed as steps to translate a protective agent from bench to bedside.

A longitudinal study of confrontation naming in the "normal" elderly.

The longitudinal effects of age on confrontation naming using the 60-item Boston Naming Test (BNT) were studied in 541 "normal" elderly (ages 50-99). For participants with at least 4 annual assessments (n = 238), 150 were followed for > or =6 years, 81 for > or =8 years, and 43 for > or =10 years. A small practice effect (0.21 words, p = 0.06) and moderately high test-retest reliability were found when comparing the first 2 assessments, which were 9-15 months apart (r = 0.76, n = 353). Reliable change index scores indicated that an annual decline of > or =4 points on the BNT is needed for a statistically reliable decline in an individual. A gradient in the mean annual rate of change on the BNT was found with improvement in the 50s age group, no change in the 60s age group, and decline in the 70s and 80s age groups. When projected over 10 years, the magnitudes of the mean changes were relatively small, that is, a 1-word improvement for participants in their 50s and a 1.3-word decline for participants in their 70s. These findings demonstrate that lexical retrieval as measured by a visual object confrontation naming task is generally well preserved in aging with only subtle decline in the 7th and 8th decades of age.

Glutathione ester but not glutathione protects against cisplatin-induced ototoxicity in a rat model.

Glutathione (GSH) provides an important antioxidant and detoxification pathway. We tested to determine if direct administration of GSH or GSH ester could reduce cisplatin- (CDDP) induced ototoxicity. We tested eight groups of five rats each: a control group, a group receiving 16 mg/kg ip CDDP infused over 30 minutes, and six groups receiving either GSH or GSH ester at 500, 1000, or 1500 mg/kg intraperitoneally 30 minutes prior to 16 mg/kg CDDP. Auditory brainstem response thresholds were measured for click and tone-burst stimuli at baseline and 3 days later. Outer hair cell (OHC) loss was measured for the apical, middle and basal turns. The 500 mg/kg GSH ester reduced hearing loss and OHC loss, but protection decreased as dosage increased, suggesting possible toxicity. GSH was not significantly protective. The best GSH ester protection was less than we have previously reported with D-methionine.