Background
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) was first detected in Mainland China in December 2019, and soon it spread throughout the world, with multiple physical and psychological consequences across the affected populations.
Aims
The aim of the current study was to analyze the impact of COVID‐19 pandemic on older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI)/dementia and their caregivers as well.
Materials and Methods
Two hundred and four caregivers took part in the study, completing a self‐reported questionnaire about the person with MCI/dementia and their own, since the lockdown period which started in February and ended in May of 2020 in Greece.
Results
Results indicated a significant overall decline of the people with MCI/dementia. Further, the domains in which people with MCI/dementia were mostly affected were: communication, mood, movement and compliance with the new measures. Caregivers also reported a great increase in their psychological and physical burden during this period, where the available support sources were limited.
Discussion
The pandemic threatens to disrupt the basic routines that promote mental and physical health of both people with MCI/dementia and t heir caregivers.
Conclusion
Further measures to protect and provide support to people who suffer and their families are needed.
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a heterogeneous group of neurodegenerative syndromes associated with several causative and susceptibility genes. Herein, we aimed to determine the incidence of the most common causative dementia genes in a cohort of 118 unrelated Greek FTD spectrum patients. We also screened for novel possible disease-associated variants in additional 21 genes associated with FTD or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Pathogenic or likely pathogenic *
Objective:
A rare variant in TREM2 (p.R47H, rs75932628) has been consistently reported to increase the risk for Alzheimer disease (AD), while mixed evidence has been reported for association of the variant with other neurodegenerative diseases. Here, we investigated the frequency of the R47H variant in a diverse and well-characterized multicenter neurodegenerative disease cohort.
Methods:
We examined the frequency of the R47H variant in a diverse neurodegenerative disease cohort, including a total of 3058 patients clinically diagnosed with AD, frontotemporal dementia spectrum syndromes, mild cognitive impairment, progressive supranuclear palsy syndrome, corticobasal syndrome, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and 5089 control subjects.
Results:
We observed a significant association between the R47H variant and AD, while no association was observed with any other neurodegenerative disease included in this study.
Conclusions:
Our results support the consensus that the R47H variant is significantly associated with AD. However, we did not find evidence for association of the R47H variant with other neurodegenerative diseases.
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