A new study from the Keck School of Medicine of USC finds that two widely used blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease can accurately detect the condition in people with Down syndrome, a population at exceptionally high risk but often excluded from diagnostic research. In the first study of its kind, researchers showed that both the FDA-approved Lumipulse G p-tau217/β-Amyloid 1-42 test and the research-use PrecivityAD2 test reliably identified Alzheimer’s-related brain changes, with accuracy comparable to the general population. The findings also establish preliminary diagnostic thresholds tailored to individuals with Down syndrome and point to a more accessible, less invasive path for screening and diagnosis, with implications for clinical care and future trials.

Most electronic health records create barriers to dementia care by offering no standard way to identify or connect medical records of patients living with dementia with their caregivers’ health records. This report describes a Canadian pilot study that examined ways to link the primary care health records of patients living with dementia to those of their caregivers in primary care.

A randomized, controlled trial found that patients assigned to a comprehensive navigation service, which helps patients understand the complexities of the medical system, had a significantly higher rate of self-reported access to needed resources three months after enrollment compared with control involving traditional signposting (50.3% vs 35.8%). The study compared two levels of social prescribing among 326 randomized patients in Ontario, Canada, and their impact on access to needed health and social resources and equity for Ontario’s Francophone minority population.

Nine family medicine clinics across Granada, Madrid, and Barcelona piloted a program that taught family physicians to perform echocardiography with an AI-guided handheld ultrasound device.

A retrospective cohort study using longitudinal data from 100,450 patients across 48 general practices in and around Amsterdam found that patients registered with their practice for longer than 5 years had 9% to 21% lower odds of urgent hospital admission and 17%-28% lower hospital costs compared to those registered for 0 to 5 years.

A theory study identified 12 paradoxes in literature surrounding social care – health care that addresses the patient’s social needs – in primary care ambulatory contexts with the goal of offering a more nuanced understanding of social care to help integrate it into clinical practice.

A qualitative interview study of 30 U.S. primary care physicians identified five major themes regarding the day-to-day experiences of independent practitioners and those employed by health systems. Health system physicians reported less autonomy in scheduling and operations, but greater financial and legal protections.