Chaur-Jong Hu

Taipei Medical University | TMU · Department of Neurology

Background Many groups have been using immunomagnetic reduction (IMR) for assaying plasma amyloid-β 1-40 (Aβ 1-40 ) peptide, Aβ 1-42 peptide and total tau protein (T-Tau) in cognitively normal controls (NC), patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and Alzheimer's disease dementia (ADD). Tremendous results have been independently rep...

Behavioural symptoms are common manifestations of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Early behavioural symptoms characterise mild behavioural impairment (MBI). The prevalence and intensity of MBI in people with PD (PwP) have been studied across various cohorts. However, methodological differences have obscured our understanding of MBI in these individuals....

Neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and Parkinson’s Disease (PD) are common complications of diabetes, arising from insulin resistance, inflammation, and other pathological processes in the central nervous system. The potential of numerous antidiabetic agents to modify neurodegenerative disease progression, both preclinic...

Incorporating pharmacogenetics into clinical practice promises to improve therapeutic outcome by choosing the medication and dosage optimized for a patient based on genetic factors that affect drug response. One of the most promising benefits of PGx-guided therapy is the avoidance of adverse reactions. To evaluate the clinical impact of PGx risk va...

Incorporating pharmacogenetics into clinical practice promises to improve therapeutic outcome by choosing the medication and dosage optimized for a patient based on genetic factors that affect drug response ¹ . One of the most promising benefits of PGx-guided therapy is the avoidance of adverse reactions ² . To evaluate the clinical impact of PGx r...

Despite recent findings indicating a paradoxical association between high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, the impact of HDL-C on subsequent outcomes after ischemic stroke remains unclear. The study aims to investigate the relationships between HDL-C levels and post-stroke functional outcome...

Background Computerized measurement tools for cognitive screening can be administered in a clinical setting or at home with or without supervision. Users’ perceptions of these tools could influence their acceptance of such self-screening tool. This study aimed to explore the perceptions of users and clinical observers regarding the Cogstate Brief B...

Vitamin B12 and folic acid could reduce blood homocysteine levels, which was thought to slow down the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD), but previous studies regarding the effect of vitamin B12 and folic acid in treatment of AD have not reached conclusive results. We searched PubMed and Embase until January 12, 2023. Only randomized control t...

Rationale: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) poses a significant clinical challenge due to its rapid progression and limited treatment options, often leading to deadly outcomes. Looking for effective therapeutic interventions is critical to improve patient outcomes in ALS. Patient concerns: The patient, a 75-year-old East Asian male, manifeste...

Introduction: Depression is strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Antidepressants are commonly used in patients before and after their diagnosis of AD. To date, the relationship between antidepressants and AD remains unclear. Methods: In our study, we administered sertraline or paroxetine to wild type (WT) and APPswe/PSEN1dE9 (APP/PSEN...

A rapidly aging world population is fueling a concomitant increase in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADRD). Scientific inquiry, however, has largely focused on White populations in Australia, the European Union, and North America. As such, there is an incomplete understanding of AD in other populations. In this perspective, we desc...

Neuropathic pain refers to pain caused by a lesion or disease of the somatosensory nervous system. Diabetic neuropathy, postherpetic neuralgia, radiculopathy pain, trigeminal neuralgia and complex regional pain syndrome are all neuropathic pain syndromes. Local administration of botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT)) has proven significant effects on the tre...

Increased medical attention is needed as the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) rises. Both cardiovascular disorder (CVD) and hyperlipidemia are closely associated with adult ASD. Shank3 plays a key genetic role in ASD. We hypothesized that Shank3 contributes to CVD development in young adults with ASD. In this study, we investigated whet...

Background: Autoimmune inner ear disease (AIED) is a rare autoimmune condition characterized by progressive sensorineural hearing loss with hearing fluctuations over weeks to months, presenting significant challenges in both diagnosis and treatment. Due to its rarity, treatment responses and prognosis in AIED remain poorly understood. Methods: This...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a highly heterogeneous disorder. Untangling this variability could lead to personalized treatments and improve participant recruitment for clinical trials. We investigated the cognitive subgroups by using a data-driven clustering technique in an AD cohort. People with mild–moderate probable AD from Taiwan was included. N...

Blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption is a prominent pathophysiological mechanism in stroke. Transplantation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) preserves BBB integrity following ischemic stroke. Fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) has been shown to be a potent neuroprotective agent that reduces neuroinflammation and protects against BBB leakage. In th...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia, presenting a significant unmet medical need worldwide. The pathogenesis of AD involves various pathophysiological events, including the accumulation of amyloid and tau, neuro-inflammation, and neuronal injury. Clinical trials focusing on new drugs for AD were documented in 2020, but subsequ...

Our systematic review and meta-analysis estimated the prevalence of post-COVID sleep disturbances in adult population. We systematically searched relevant studies from four databases that reported post-COVID sleep disturbances prevalence with a mean or median follow-up duration of ≥28 days. We identified 153 eligible papers, with a total COVID-19 p...

Background Previous observational studies have shown that people with dental scaling (DS) had decreased risk of stroke. However, limited information is available on the association between DS and poststroke outcomes. The present study aimed to evaluate the effects of regular DS on the complications and mortality after stroke. Methods We conducted...

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has a heavy health-related burden on patients and the healthcare system. Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is effective in treating OSA, but adherence to it is often inadequate. A promising solution is to detect sleep apnea events in advance, and to adjust the pressure accordingly, which could improve the long...

Background: Hypertension and oxidative stress are involved in the pathophysiological mechanism of stroke. We aimed to investigate the modification impact of the pro-oxidant-anti-oxidant balance (PAB) on the association between hypertension and stroke recurrence (SR). Methods: A cross-sectional design was conducted from December 2019 to December...

Gut microbiota (GM) are involved in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and might correlate to the machinery of the gut-brain axis. Alteration of the GM profiles becomes a potential therapy strategy in AD. Here, we found that plasmon-activated water (PAW) therapy altered GM profile and reduced AD symptoms in APPswe/PS1dE9 transgenic mic...

Long-term exposure to air pollution can lead to cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, and chronic respiratory disease. However, from a lifetime perspective, the critical period of air pollution exposure in terms of health risk is unknown. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of air pollution exposure at different life stages. The study par...

The aim of systematic review and meta-analysis was to investigate whether APOE4 was associated with postoperative neurologic dysfunction occurrence in short- or medium-term among surgical patients and to study the potential genetic association among these two entities. We searched electronic databases for reserch studies to evaluate the association...

The cerebral vascular system stringently regulates cerebral blood flow (CBF). The components of the blood–brain barrier (BBB) protect the brain from pathogenic infections and harmful substances, efflux waste, and exchange substances; however, diseases develop in cases of blood vessel injuries and BBB dysregulation. Vascular pathology is concurrent...

Introduction: Patients with dementia have a 1.42 times higher risk of hospitalization than those without. Preparing and educating caregivers by counseling may attenuate the frequency of hospitalization and the financial burden on the health-care system. We conducted a retrospective observational study to verify whether caregiver counseling would b...

In Alzheimer’s disease (AD), cognitive impairment begins 10‐15 years later than neurodegeneration in the brain. Plasma biomarkers are promising candidates for assessing neurodegeneration in people with normal cognition. It has been reported that subjects with the concentration product of plasma amyloid β 1‐42 and total Tau protein, i.e. Aβ1‐42 x T‐...

Cognitive dysfunction is a core feature of dementia spectrum disorders but simple screening tests are less sensitive to detect the deficits, especially in the very early stage of disease course using most standardized test instruments. This results in delayed discovery of disease onset and opportunity for early interventions that might be more effe...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) poses a substantial healthcare burden in the rapidly aging Asian population. Early diagnosis of AD, by means of biomarkers, can lead to interventions that might alter the course of the disease. The amyloid, tau, and neurodegeneration (AT[N]) framework, which classifies biomarkers by their core pathophysiological features, i...

Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) exhibit distinct gut microbiota, which may promote gut-derived inflammation. Rifaximin is a nonabsorbable antibiotic that can modify gut microbiota. The present study investigated the effect of rifaximin on gut microbiota and inflammation status in PD. The study examined the effect of long-term rifaximin treat...

Population aging has challenged the treatment of cognitive impairment or dementia. Vascular dementia is the second leading cause of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease. Cognitive consequences after ischemic brain injury have been recognized as a preferred target for therapeutic strategies, prompting the search for potential agents. The keyword “vasc...

The present study proposes a cognitive prosthesis device for face memory impairment as a proof-of-concept for the domain-specific cognitive prosthesis. Healthy subjects (n = 6) and a patient with poor face memory were enrolled. An acquaintance face recognition test with and without the use of cognitive prosthesis for face memory impairment, face re...

What is known and objective: Low treatment persistence and adherence in patients with dementia results in a rapid loss of disease control. This pilot study evaluated the impact of pharmacist-provided caregiver counselling on treatment persistence, adherence, quality of life (QoL) in patients with dementia, as well as caregiver's knowledge of demen...

Background Poststroke cognitive impairment (PSCI) is a prevalent cause of disability in people with stroke. PSCI results from either lesion-dependent loss of cognitive function or augmentation of Alzheimer's pathology due to vascular insufficiency. The lack of prestroke cognitive assessments limits the clear understanding of the impact of PSCI on c...

The present article reviewed the pharmacologic therapies of traumatic brain injury (TBI), including current and potential treatments. Pharmacologic therapies are an essential part of TBI care, and several agents have well-established effects in TBI care. In the acute phase, tranexamic acid, antiepileptics, hyperosmolar agents, and anesthetics are t...

Background The incidence of ischemic stroke has been increasing in the young population over the past 20 years. Poststroke epilepsy (PSE) is a common complication after stroke. However, few population-based studies with sufficient follow-up have investigated factors associated with PSE, especially factors related to comorbidities and unhealthy life...

Background: Comorbidity, along with aging, affects stroke-induced health-related quality of life (HRQoL). We examined the potential role of diet quality in modifying the association between comorbidity and HRQoL in patients with stroke. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 951 patients with stroke from December 2019 to December 2020 a...

The influence of red yeast rice (RYR) on the risk of incident stroke remains underexplored. We aimed to compare the risk of stroke between people with and without use of RYR prescriptions. We used research data from the National Health Insurance Program in Taiwan and identified 34,723 adults (aged ≥20 years) who first received the RYR prescription...

Background: Differential abundance of gut microbiota has found to be associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, the relative abundance of gut microbiota between dementia and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in AD is not well studied. Objective: We attempted to identify differentially enriched gut microbes and their metabolic pathways in A...

Introduction Post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI) cannot be neglected because it drastically influences the daily life of patients and their families. However, there are no studies exploring the association between preclinical blood biomarkers of neurodegeneration including plasma amyloid-β (Aβ), tau, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)...

Patients who previously suffered a stroke have increased risks of mortality and complications after surgeries, but the optimal anesthesia method is not fully understood. We aimed to compare the outcomes after surgeries for stroke patients who received general anesthesia (GA) and neuraxial anesthesia (NA). Using health insurance research data, we id...

Subjects with comorbidities are at risk for neurodegeneration. There is a lack of a direct relationship between comorbidities and neurodegeneration. In this study, immunomagnetic reduction (IMR) assays were utilized to assay plasma Aβ 1–42 and total tau protein (T-Tau) levels in poststroke (PS, n = 27), family history of Alzheimer’s disease (ADFH,...

Background Previous studies demonstrated differential abundances of gut microbiota between Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and normal controls (NCs). However, gut microbiota distribution between dementia and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) in AD subjects lacks clear data. With whole‐genome shotgun metagenomic sequencing (WGS), we aimed to identi...

Background: Unfavorable prognoses are often accompanied for hyperglycemic stroke patients. This study aimed to construct a hyperglycemia/diabetes-derived polygenic risk score (PRS) to improve the predictive performance for poor outcome risks after a stroke and to evaluate its potential clinical application. Methods: A hospital-based cohort study...

Objective The Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination III (ACE-III) is a 100-points cognitive test used in detecting dementia in many countries. There has been no validation study of the ACE-III in patients with suspected dementia in a Taiwanese population, where the language is traditional Chinese. We aimed to culturally adapt and validate the ACE-III...

Background In Alzheimer’s disease (AD), cognitive impairment begins 10–15 years later than neurodegeneration in the brain. Plasma biomarkers are promising candidates for assessing neurodegeneration in people with normal cognition. It has been reported that subjects with the concentration of plasma amyloid-β 1-42×total tau protein higher than 455 pg...

The risk and outcomes of diabetes in patients with epilepsy remains unclear. We evaluated these risks using an epilepsy cohort analysis and a diabetes admission analysis. In the epilepsy cohort analysis, we identified 2854 patients with newly diagnosed epilepsy in 2000–2008 from the research data of National Health Insurance in Taiwan. Using Propen...

Ischemic stroke is the leading cause of mortality and long-term disability worldwide. Disruption of the blood–brain barrier (BBB) is a prominent pathophysiological mechanism, responsible for a series of subsequent inflammatory cascades that exacerbate the damage to brain tissue. However, the benefit of recanalization is limited in most patients bec...

IntroductionConcentrations of plasma biomarkers associated with Alzheimer’s disease have been reported to be as low as several tens of picograms/milliliter (pg/ml). However, in assays measuring these biomarkers, it is likely that repeated measurements are necessary to obtain reliable values.Methods We performed assays as a single test or as duplica...

IntroductionThe current study aimed to provide data on the effectiveness of the 10 cm2 rivastigmine patch in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in a real-world setting in Taiwan.Methods This was a 48-week, single-arm, open-label, observational, and post-marketing study conducted across seven centers in Taiwan between May 5, 2016 and July 10, 20...

Aging contributes to the progression of vascular dysfunction and is a major nonreversible risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of using arterial pulse-wave measurements, frequency-domain pulse analysis, and machine-learning analysis in distinguishing vascular aging. Radial pulse signals we...

Background: The driving safety of persons with dementia (PwD) is an important public-health issue worldwide. Driving is closely related to personal autonomy, self-esteem, and independence. When PwD lose their driving privileges, this may lead to negative effects on mental health. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationshi...

Introduction Post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI) cannot be neglected because it drastically influences the daily life of patients and their families. However, there are no studies exploring the association between preclinical blood biomarkers of neurodegeneration including plasma amyloid-β (Aβ), tau and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)...

We previously showed a hydroxamic acid-based histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi), compound 13, provides neuroprotection against chronic cerebral hypoperfusion (CCH) both in vitro under oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD) conditions and in vivo under bilateral common carotid artery occlusion (BCCAO) conditions. Intriguingly, the protective effect of...

Background and purpose: The rate of donepezil discontinuation and the underlying reasons for discontinuation in Asian patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are currently unknown. We aimed to determine the treatment discontinuation rates in AD patients who had newly been prescribed donepezil in routine clinical practice in Asia. Methods: This 1-...

Traumatic brain injury leads to major brain anatomopathological damages underlined by neuroinflammation, oxidative stress and progressive neurodegeneration, ultimately leading to motor and cognitive deterioration. The multiple pathological events resulting from traumatic brain injury can be addressed not by a single therapeutic approach, but rather...

Aim To investigate the clinical and genetic features of hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) type 3A (SPG3A) in Taiwan. Methods Mutational analysis of the ATL1 gene was performed for 274 unrelated Taiwanese HSP patients. The diagnosis of SPG3A was ascertained by the presence of a heterozygous pathogenic mutation in ATL1. The SPG3A patients received...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease that usually affects older individuals. Owing to the higher incidence of root caries and missing teeth in elderly individuals, the bacteria involved in these dental concerns might potentially deteriorate their cognitive function. Altered microbiota in the oral cavity may induce neuroinflammati...

Purpose Although rare, orbital cavernous hemangioma (OCH) is the most common benign orbital neoplasm in adults and may cause vision disturbance or loss due to optic nerve compression. The conventional treatment is surgical excision, which carries a risk of intraoperative nerve damage, whereas gamma knife radiosurgery (GKRS) can be a safe and effect...

Moyamoya disease (MMD) is a cerebrovascular disease that presents with vascular stenosis and a hazy network of collateral formations in angiography. However, the detailed pathogenic pathway remains unknown. Studies have indicated that in addition to variations in the of genetic factor RNF213, unusual circulating angiogenetic factors observed in pat...

Background: Parkinson disease (PD), the second most common neurodegenerative disease, has no cure or applicable disease-modifying approach, only symptomatic therapy. Oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction play key roles in PD pathophysiology. Animal studies have demonstrated that photobiomodulation (PBM) may enhance mitochondrial function...