_ Mental & Emotional Health Nasal Spray Treats Depression By article A nasal spray that delivers a peptide to treat depression holds promise as a potential alternative therapeutic approach, according to research done at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. The study, led by CAMH's Dr. Fang Liu, is published online in Neuropsychopharmacology.
I Want To Take The Alzheimer's Test By blog Last night I had trouble getting to sleep. Tossing and turning, I attempted to clear my thoughts, but my brain had other ideas. My mind was on an instant replay loop: A new study reveals researchers have developed a blood test that will predict if a healthy person — someone with no symptoms — is likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease within the next few years. The study focused on people over 70 and was about 90 percent accurate.
_ Heart Health Post-Stroke Surgery Increases Survival Rate By Jane Farrell article Stroke patients over the age of 60 benefit from a post-stroke surgical procedure that temporarily removes part of the skull, researchers have found. The findings involve people who have suffered a major stroke because of blockage to the middle cerebral artery. The procedure that benefits them is called hemicraniectomy – removal of part of the skull located above the affected brain tissue. It relieves increased pressure on the brain in the 48 hours after the stroke.
_ What You May Not Know About Preventing Heart Attacks, Strokes, and Diabetes By article By Bradley Bale MD and Amy Doneen ARNP with Lisa Collier Cool Have you ever wondered why someone could feel perfectly fine and then minutes later have a massive heart attack or stroke that either kills the person or causes a life-long disability? Even more challenging is the concept that some people can go in for a full medical exam, including cholesterol and blood pressure check and a stress test, and be told they are fine only to drop dead of a heart attack days or weeks later.
25 Tips to Stretch Your Mind At Any Age By blog The good news is your brain has plasticity. This means that the brain has a natural ability to remodel itself throughout life so that the phrase “stretch your mind at any age” resonates. The brain is always changing, sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse. This neuroplasticity gives the brain the ability to change its neural pathways and synapses, which in turn affects changes in behavior, environment and neural processes.
Monitoring Reactions to AD Risk Status By article A new clinical trial will begin soon at the University of Pennsylvania to test whether early medical intervention in people at risk for Alzheimer's can slow down progression of disease before symptoms emerge. As part of the overall prevention trial, Penn Medicine neurodegenerative ethics experts will monitor how learning about their risk of developing Alzheimer's impacts trial participants. The trial was outlined in March 2014 in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
_ Mental & Emotional Health Suppressing Unwanted Memories By article Researchers at the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in the UK have shown that suppressing unwanted memories reduces their unconscious influences on subsequent behavior. The team has also shed light on how this process happens in the brain.
_ Slowing Down Alzheimer's Plaques By article University of Michigan researchers have learned how to fix a cellular structure called the Golgi that mysteriously becomes fragmented in all Alzheimer's patients and appears to be a major cause of the disease. The scientists say that understanding this mechanism helps decode amyloid plaque formation in the brains of Alzheimer's patients—plaques that kills cells and contributes to memory loss and other Alzheimer's symptoms.
Sundown Syndrome And A Breath of Fresh Air By blog Editor's Note: As many of our readers know, Sundowning (or Sundown Syndrome) sometimes affects people who have Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Rita Altman, VP of Memory Care for Sunrise Senior Living, is an expert and recently put some of her expert tips on how to respond to symptoms of Sundowning to "virtual" paper in the form of a blog. Rita writes that you should, "observe for emotions and behaviors, Look for the unmet need, Respond with empathy, Don't forget about vitamin D and Maintain a routine." For additional insight and detail around these tips, we've posted Rita's original blog below.
_ A Better Understanding of Memory Loss By Jane Farrell article Scientists have discovered how a lack of oxygen can interact with inflammation to cause memory loss in conditions like stroke and Alzheimer’s disease. The research, from the University of British Columbia, focused on microglia, part of a newly discovered brain mechanism that contributes to Alzheimer’s. Chronic inflammation and oxygen deficiency are hallmarks of several brain diseases. But until now, there hasn’t been much known about how they contribute to symptoms such as memory loss.
Lessons From Managing Geriatric Patients By article A large team of experts led by a Johns Hopkins geriatrician reports that efforts to improve the care of older adults and others with complex medical needs will fall short unless public policymakers focus not only on preventing hospital readmission rates, but also on better coordination of community-based "care transitions." Lessons learned from managing such transitions for older patients, they say, may offer a framework for overall improvement.
_ Solving The Lithium Problem By Jane Farrell article A safer form of lithium is on the horizon, researchers say. The drug, one of the most widely used to treat bipolar disorder has a serious drawback of toxicity. But investigators from the University of South Florida discovered that an oral variation, lithium salicylate, maintains steady levels of the drug for up to 48 hours without the toxic “spike” that happens with the rapid absorption of FDA-approved lithium carbonate. Their study results appear in RSC Advances, the journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
_ Mental & Emotional Health Diagnosing Parkinson's-Related Dementia By Jane Farrell article Researchers have determined that it may now be possible to identify Parkinson's patients who will go on to develop dementia. A study conducted by researchers from the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal used magnetic resonance imaging in reaching its conclusion. The findings were published in the journal Brain. Parkinson’s is usually associated with problems such as trembling, but patients also have a six times greater risk of developing dementia than do those who don’t have Parkinson’s.
_ Prehospital Alerts for Stroke Patients By article Prehospital stroke alerts by emergency medical services personnel can shorten the time to effective treatment with "clot-busting" drugs for patients who have had a stroke, according to a report in the March issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.
_ Memory Loss Could Someday Be Reversed By Jane Farrell article Researchers have made a discovery that may make age-related memory loss a thing of the past. The drug can’t be used by humans yet, but scientists from the University of Florida are developing compounds that could eventually help adults who have memory trouble but are not suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia.
_ Is Your Hearing Getting Worse? By Jane Farrell article From NIH SeniorHealth.gov. Hearing loss, a common yet complex problem, involves both the ear’s ability to detect sounds and the brain’s ability to interpret those sounds, including speech. Several factors have to be taken into account to determine how much of an effect hearling loss will have on quality of life. They include: *the degree of the hearing loss *the pattern of hearing loss across different frequencies (pitches) *whether one or both ears is affected
_ Vision Health Goodbye to Reading Glasses? By Jane Farrell article A new finding by researchers could help improve vision for adults who are lost without their reading glasses. Middle-aged people who suddenly need reading glasses, patients with traumatic brain injuries, and people with visual disorders such as "lazy eye" likely have one thing in common — "visual crowding." That’s the inability to recognize individual items surrounded by multiple objects.
_ Alzheimer's in a Petri Dish By article Pearse, PhD, confirmed what had long been observed in mouse models—that the mutations associated with early-onset Alzheimer's disease are directly related to protein cleavage errors that cause a rise in amyloid-beta (Aβ) protein 42, which all people produce but somehow clump together to form plaques in Alzheimer's patients.