Listening for early signs of Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease affects more than 50 million people worldwide, often devastating both the individuals who have it and their families and loved ones. It has no known cure, and the slow, progressive nature of the disease makes early diagnosis difficult.

Researchers from École de Technologie Supérieure and Dartmouth University are investigating the use of earpiece microphones to spot early signs of Alzheimer's. Miriam Boutros will present their work on Tuesday, Nov. 

19  as part of the virtual 187th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running Nov.

18-22, 2024.

People with Alzheimer's exhibit a loss of motor control along with cognitive decline.

One of the earliest signs of this decay can be spotted in involuntary eye movements known as saccades.

These quick twitches of the eyes in Alzheimer's patients are often slower, less accurate, or delayed compared to those in healthy individuals.

"Eye movements are fascinating since they are some of the most rapid and precise movements in the human body, thus they rely on both excellent motor skills and cognitive functioning," said researcher Arian Shamei.

Detecting and analyzing saccades directly requires a patient to be monitored by eye-tracking equipment, which is not easily accessible for most people.

Boutros and her colleagues are exploring an alternative method using a more ubiquitous and less intrusive technology: earpiece microphones.

This research is led by Rachel Bouserhal at the Research in Hearing Health and Assistive Devices (RHAD) Laboratory at École de Technologie Supérieure and Chris Niemczak at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth University.

"We are using a device called a hearable," said Boutros. "It is an earpiece with in-ear microphones that captures physiological signals from the body. Our goal is to develop health-monitoring algorithms for hearables, capable of continuous, long-term monitoring and early disease detection."

Eye movements, including saccades, cause eardrum vibrations that can be picked up by sensitive microphones located within the ear.

The researchers are conducting experiments with volunteers, giving them both hearables and conventional eye trackers.

Their goal is to identify signals corresponding to saccades, and to differentiate between healthy signals and others that are indicative of neurological disorders like Alzheimer's.

They hope one day their research will lead to devices that can perform noninvasive continuous monitoring for Alzheimer's along with other neurological diseases.

"While the current project is focused on long-term monitoring of Alzheimer's disease, eventually, we would like to tackle other diseases and be able to differentiate between them based on symptoms that can be tracked through in-ear signals," said Shamei.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Acoustical Society of America. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

 

Courtesy:

Acoustical Society of America. "Listening for early signs of Alzheimer's disease." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 20 November 2024. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/11/241120122700.htm>. 

 

 

 

Pandrug-resistant bacteria from the war in Ukraine are extremely pathogenic

Lund University in Sweden has previously reported on Kristian Riesbeck, professor of clinical bacteriology at Lund University and senior consultant, who was contacted by the Ukrainian microbiologist Oleksandr Nazarchuk for assistance in examining the degree of antibiotic resistance in bacteria from severely war-wounded and infected patients being treated in hospital.

Using samples from 141 war-wounded (133 adults wounded in the war and eight new-born babies with pneumonia) it could be shown that several bacteria types were resistant to broad-spectrum antibiotics and that six per cent of all samples were resistant to all the antibiotics that the researchers tested on them.

Now, the researchers have published an article in Journal of Infection, in which the researchers have gone on to examine whether Klebsiella pneumoniae* has the ability to cause disease in a wider context. Klebsiella can cause urinary tract infections, pneumonia, skin infections in wounds, and sepsis. The researchers used samples from 37 of the patients who had been previously shown to have resistant bacteria. The entire genome of the bacteria was sequenced to examine whether there were genes that can cause resistance.

"All the bacteria were shown to carry the genes that we know are associated with resistance. We saw that one quarter of them were resistant to all the available antimicrobial drugs on the market, these bacteria are said to have total resistance (pandrug-resistant). Infections caused by these bacteria become very difficult, or in some cases impossible, to treat with the medicines we have today," says professor Riesbeck.

Pandrug-resistant bacteria are an extreme form of antibiotic resistance and a growing concern within healthcare.

The researchers were interested in finding out whether infection could be spread further via the bacteria taken from patients in Ukraine. To examine this, experiments were carried out in mice and insect larvae.

"It was shown that the bacteria types most resistant to antibiotics were also the ones that survived best in mice in connection with pneumonia. Similarly, these bacteria types were so aggressive that they killed the insect larvae considerably faster than the bacteria that were less resistant to antibiotics."

Genetic sequencing showed that all Klebsiella bacteria with total resistance examined by the researchers carried the genes that make them more virulent.

"In many cases, bacteria lose their ability to infect and cause disease because all their energy is spent on being resistant to antibiotics. But we have perhaps underestimated bacteria: we saw that many of these bacteria types from Ukraine are equipped with genes that make them both resistant and virulent," says Kristian Riesbeck.

According to professor Riesbeck, this means the bacteria that spread among the wounded in Ukraine will most likely continue to survive and cause problems.

"This is something that will not disappear over time. As long as the patients cannot be isolated and treated properly, the spread of infection will continue."

Kristian Riesbeck considers the results are frightening, but not unexpected. This is what happens when the infrastructure of a healthcare system collapses. And it applies to Ukraine and other war-torn areas around the world.

"Even though these pandrug-resistant bacteria are fighting to survive our antibiotic treatments, they still have a complete set of genes that make them capable of causing disease. This is surprising for us all and unfortunately a worrying sign for the future."

*Klebsiella pneumoniae is one of the leading bacterial causes of mortality globally. It is estimated that Klebsiella pneumoniae is responsible for about 20 per cent of all deaths attributable to antimicrobial resistance.

The research has been conducted with support from, among others, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Swedish Research Council, Swedish Heart Lung Foundation and ALF funding from Region Skåne.

Journal Reference:

1. Oskar Ljungquist, Michal Magda, Christian G. Giske, Chaitanya Tellapragada, Oleksandr Nazarchuk, Dmytro Dmytriiev, Oskar Thofte, Valdemar Öhnström, Erika Matuschek, Anna M. Blom, Kristian Riesbeck. Pandrug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae isolated from Ukrainian war victims are hypervirulent. Journal of Infection, 2024; 89 (6): 106312 DOI: 10.1016/j.jinf.2024.106312 

Courtesy:

Lund University. "Pandrug-resistant bacteria from the war in Ukraine are extremely pathogenic." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 25 November 2024. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/11/241125124920.htm>.