Summary: Regional cerebral blood flow was measured by the 133-xenon inhalation method during resting in 38 healthy men and 38 healthy women matched pairwise for age in the range 18-72 years. The results showed 11 % higher global flow level in the women in all ages. A sim ilar and significant regression of flow by age was seen for both sexes. The regional flow distribution also showed some sex-related differences. Frontal regions showed an asymmetry in the men with higher values on the right

It has been suggested that a number of molecules associated with inflammation are involved in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We measured the levels of α₁-antichymotrypsin (ACT), α₁-antitrypsin (AAT), interleukin-6 (IL-6), monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) and oxidised low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) in matched cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and plasma of 141 patients with probable AD. We found a significant relationship between CSF and plasma levels of ACT (r = 0.4, p < 0.001), IL-6 (r = 0.74, p < 0.001), MCP-1 (r = 0.71, p < 0.001), and a borderline relationship between CSF and plasma oxLDL (r = 0.22, p < 0.05). In addition, linear regression analysis revealed a positive correlation between levels of CSF-ACT and oxLDL (p < 0.001), but an inverse relation between levels of CSF ACT, CSF AAT and MCP-1 (p < 0.001). A significant correlation was also found between levels of CSF ACT, oxLDL and the ratio of CSF to serum albumin, which is used as a measure of the blood-brain barrier function. Our data extend previous reports regarding the inflammatory markers in the plasma and CSF of patients with AD and provide good evidence that levels of ACT, IL-6, MCP-1 and oxLDL in plasma and CSF might be candidates as biomarkers for monitoring the inflammatory process in AD.

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Rapid automatic naming tasks are clinical tools for probing brain functions that underlie normal cognition. To compare performance for various stimuli in normal subjects and assess the effect of aging, we administered six single-dimension stimuli (color, form, number, letter, animal, and object) and five dual-dimension stimuli (color-form, color-number, color-letter, color-animal, and color-object) to 144 normal volunteers who ranged in age from 15 to 85 years. Rapid automatic naming times for letters and numbers were significantly less than for forms, animals, and objects. Rapid automatic naming times for color-number and color-letter stimuli were significantly less than for color-form, color-animal, or color-object stimuli. Age correlated significantly with rapid automatic naming time for each single-dimension stimulus and for color-form, color-number, color-animal, and color-object stimuli. Linear regression showed that rapid automatic naming times increased with age for aggregated color stimuli, aggregated single-dimension stimuli, and aggregated dual-dimension stimuli. This age effect persisted in subgroups less than 60 years of age and greater than 60 years of age. We conclude that normal performance time is dependent on the task, with letter and number stimuli eliciting most rapid responses, and that most rapid automatic naming times increase with age.

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