Hearing aids did not significantly slow conversion from MCI to dementia, and plasma pTau217 tracked cortical tau at autopsy

The edition in brief

In the CHOICE trial, 703 older adults in Shanghai with mild cognitive impairment and moderate to severe hearing loss were randomised to hearing aids or hearing care education. Over 24 months, conversion to dementia-level impairment was 3.1% vs 4.7% (relative risk 0.59, 0.25 to 1.38), not statistically significant; a prespecified secondary outcome, return to normal cognition, was more common with hearing aids (15.3% vs 2.4%). In 32 autopsied patients from a Leuven memory clinic, plasma pTau217 correlated strongly with temporal cortex pTau217 (rho 0.73 to 0.78) and distinguished Alzheimer disease from frontotemporal lobar degeneration with an area under the curve of 0.88 to 0.94. In the China Kadoorie Biobank, regular smoking was associated with a 30% lower risk of Parkinson disease, and among never-smokers higher exhaled carbon monoxide was associated with lower risk in a dose-related way. A JAMA Neurology review describes MOGAD's MRI hallmarks, including radiological lag and frequent T2 lesion resolution, and argues surveillance MRI is less useful than in multiple sclerosis. Only CHOICE is randomised; its primary result was negative.