Dr. Jeffrey Cummings (Brain Health) recently published an article, “The Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI): Development and Applications,” in the Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology. The article reviews the development of the NPI assessment tool since Dr. Cummings first introduced it 25 years ago and which has been used in approximately 350 clinical trials and has been translated into 40 or so languages. The article concludes it remains valid and reliable for capturing behavioral changes in Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders, including dementia.

Additionally, Cummings and his co-authors have recently published articles related to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases in three other journals:

 “Revisiting Criteria for Psychosis in Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias: Toward Better Phenotypic Classification and Biomarker Research” was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. The findings show the importance of defining which patients are included in clinical trials to understand which populations could benefit from drug therapy.

A study analyzing gender and Alzheimer's disease was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Research & Therapy. The article, “Cognitively Normal Women with Alzheimer’s Disease Proteinopathy Show Relative Preservation of Memory but not of Hippocampal Volume,” showed that when compared to men, women with Alzheimer's disease had more preserved memory early on which may mean diagnosis and treatment may be delayed for women, putting them at a disadvantage.

A study showing early impacts of Parkinson disease was recently published in the Journal of Neurology. In the article, “Unique White Matter Structural Connectivity in Early-stage, Drug-naive Parkinson's Disease,” Cummings and his co-authors also analyze MRI data to demonstrate unique changes in how the brain works in patients who have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease but have not yet received treatment.