j’s blog

Pessimism Raises Dementia Risk, Study Finds - Yahoo! News

Pessimistic, anxious and depressed people may have a higher risk of dementia, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

A study of a group of 3,500 people showed that those who scored high for pessimism on a standardized personality test had a 30 percent increased risk of developing dementia 30 to 40 years later.

Those scoring very high on both anxiety and pessimism scales had a 40 percent higher risk, the study showed.

“There appears to be a dose-response pattern, i.e., the higher the scores, the higher the risk of dementia,” Dr. Yonas Geda, a neuropsychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota who led the study, said in a statement.

Geda and colleagues looked at the medical records of 3,500 men and women who lived near the clinic between 1962 and 1965.

They all took the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a standard personality and life experience test, Geda’s team told a meeting of the
American Academy of Neurology in Miami.

In 2004 the team interviewed the participants or family members.

Those who scored higher for anxiety and pessimism on the test were more likely, as a group, to have developed dementia by 2004, including
Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia.

This did not mean a person who is pessimistic could assume he or she has a higher risk of developing dementia.

“One has to be cautious in interpreting a study like this,” Geda said.

“One cannot make a leap from group level data to the individual. Certainly the last thing you want to do is to say, ‘Well, I am a pessimist; thus, I am doomed to develop dementia 20 or 30 years later,’ because this may end up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

And there is not any specific way to prevent dementia, although many studies have shown that a healthy diet, exercise, keeping active in other ways, doing puzzles and other activities lower the risk.

ABC News: Variety of Activities May Lower Dementia Risk - Study

Apr 14, 2005 — WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A variety of activities like exercise, household chores and even dancing, can help people avoid Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

They found that variety was more important for preventing dementia than total calories burned in exercise and other physical activities.

“We don’t yet know why this association exists or what causes it,” said Dr. Constantine Lyketsos, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

“It could well be that maintaining a variety of activities keeps more parts of the brain active, or that this variety reflects better engagement in both physical and social activities,” he added in a statement.

The study included 3,375 men and women over the age of 64 who did not have dementia when the program began.

Writing in the American Journal of Epidemiology, Lyketsos and colleagues said each volunteer answered questions about the frequency and duration of physical activities such as walking, household chores, gardening, dancing, bowling or swimming.

Researchers then created an activity index, and considered other factors such as age, gender, education level, ethnicity, smoking and alcohol use.

Over the next 5 years, 480 people developed dementia. Of those, only 84 who listed four or more activities developed dementia, as opposed to 130 who listed one activity or none.

The association held true for all types of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia.

The study also took into consideration what type of APOE gene people had. APOE, or apolipoprotein-E, is related to cholesterol metabolism and people with one particular variant of this gene called APOE-4 have a higher risk of Alzheimer’s.

And in the study, exercise and other activities did not protect people with APOE-4.

An estimated 4.5 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, and this number is projected to reach 16 million by 2050, as the population ages, unless ways are found to prevent it.

Never heard this before, always thought spirulina was supposed to be good for you.

The Local - Swedish “health drink” could cause Alzheimers

A Swedish juice manufacturer has withdrawn one of its products after scientists in Stockholm discovered that its key ingredient could cause Alzheimers and Parkinsons. The drink, made by Brämhults, contains spirulina algae, which scientists have now discovered produces the poisonous substance BMAA.

The scientists who made the discovery are as yet unsure whether the health drink actually contains BMAA, or whether the substance disappears during the production process. Birgitta Bergman of Stockholm University, who discovered the link between the algae and BMAA, told Aftonbladet that she would conduct tests on the drink in the coming months.

On hearing of the discovery, Brämhults made an immediate decision to withdraw the drink from the market. The spirulinna drink has been on sale for six years.

Managing director Thomas Gustafsson said that the company would not sell the product if there was the slightest doubt about its safety. Other juice drinks in the company’s range, which do not contain spirulin, will not be taken off the shelves.

The research which led to the discovery of the effects of BMAA started after islanders on the Pacific island of Guam were hit by neurological illnesses. It was discovered that the substance could be found in a type of nut popular among islanders.

It was later discovered that Alzheimer patients in a study had BMAA in their brains, while healthy people did not. The latest research has linked the substance to the type of blue-green algae that blossoms every summer in the Baltic Sea, Svenska Dagbladet reported.

Turmeric pigment key to preventing dementia : HindustanTimes.com

Curcumin, the yellow pigment in turmeric, may be the key to the low prevalence of dementia among the elderly in India, where the spice is used in most foods, a team of US researchers has said.

A team of researchers led by Greg M Cole, a neuroscientist at the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System, identified curcumin as a potential cure to prevent or treat Alzheimer’s disease after they discovered low rates of dementia in India, according to the US Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

The Cole team identified curcumin as a nutrient that appears to combat Alzheimer’s plaques.

They also found that a diet high in docosahexenoic acid or DHA — an omega-3 fatty acid found in relatively high concentrations in cold-water fish — dramatically slowed the progression of Alzheimer’s in mice.

“Specifically, DHA cut the harmful brain plaques that mark the disease,” the team found. The results appear in the March 23 online edition of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Greg said that unlike many studies with mice, this one points to the benefits of a therapy that is easily available and already recommended for other medical conditions. DHA — either from food sources such as fish and soy, or in fish-oil supplements — is recommended by many cardiologists for a healthy heart.

“The good news from this study is that we can buy the therapy at a supermarket or drug store,” Cole was quoted as saying. “DHA has a tremendous safety profile — essentially no side effects — and clinical trial evidence supports giving DHA supplements to people at risk for cardiovascular disease.”

According to the studies, people who are genetically predisposed to the disease may be able to delay it by boosting their DHA intake.

Omega-3 fatty acids are deficient in the American diet, although they are essential for human health. DHA in particular is vital to proper brain function, as well as eye health and other body processes. Omega-3 fatty acids are found in fish such as salmon, halibut, mackerel and sardines, as well as almonds, walnuts, soy, and DHA-enriched eggs.

Health News Article | Reuters.com

By Michelle Rizzo

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Men with a history of depression long before the onset of any memory or other cognitive problems have a substantially higher risk of developing dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease (AD), later in life, a study indicates. This risk is not observed in women.

Dr. Gloria Dal Forno, of University Campus BioMedico and Associazione Fatebenefratelli per la Ricerca, Rome, Italy, and colleagues examined the association between premorbid symptoms of depression and the development of dementia and AD over a period of 14 years in 1357 subjects enrolled in a study on aging.

Researchers assessed the frequency and severity of depressive symptoms every 2 years using standard instruments.

A total of 49 cases of dementia were diagnosed among women during the study period. Of these, 40 represented AD. A total of 76 men were diagnosed with dementia, of which 67 were AD.

The risk of dementia, especially AD, was significantly increased with premorbid depressive symptoms only in men. The risk was approximately two times greater in those with a history of depression than for those without a history of depression, and was independent of the presence of vascular disease.

“The prevalence and clinical manifestations of both AD and depression differ in men and women,” Dal Forno noted in an interview with Reuters Health.

“We know that male and female brains have anatomical and functional differences and are exposed differently to sex hormones throughout life, hormones known to have effects on both depression and AD,” she noted.

“As a consequence, male and female brains might react to conditions causing or enhancing a disease quite differently, which seems to be precisely what we found in this investigation.”

Given the prevalence of depression and increasing longevity worldwide, “clearly the public health and economic implications are significant,” the researcher added.

Furthermore, “Prevention of depressive disorders and aggressive as well as long-term treatment of depression may impact on the epidemiology of dementia,” she added. “This is particularly relevant in men since they generally are less likely to admit to symptoms of depression and to seek treatment.”

SOURCE: Annals of Neurology March, 2005.

Yahoo! News - Computer Test Accurately Detects Early Alzheimer’s

Mon Mar 21, 6:43 PM ET

By Karla Gale

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Researchers have developed a more accurate version of a standard test to detect dementia and cognitive impairment that takes only about 10 minutes to administer, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (news - web sites).

The standard scoring method for dementia, known as the “National Institute of Aging’s Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease’s 10-word list” (CWL), consists of three immediate-recall trials of a 10-word list, followed by an interference task, and then a delayed-recall trial of the word list.

“In the traditional scoring and interpretation, only the total score from the fourth trial is usually used,” lead author Dr. William R. Shankle explained to Reuters Health. However, much more information can be gleaned from analyzing the patterns of words recalled based on their placement in the list.

“The method we describe — the mental skills test — uses the individual responses to every item in all four trials to come up with an answer,” the researcher added.

The mental skills test takes about 10 minutes to administer online. Once the answers are submitted, a formula is used to calculate the final score that within seconds “indicates if a person is impaired or not with an overall accuracy 97 percent,” Shankle said.

Shankle and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, evaluated 471 community-dwelling subjects using the interview-based Clinical Dementia Rating Scale. They then compared results of the standard CWL test and the mental skills test.

For differentiating mild cognitive impairment from normal aging, the shorter mental skills test was more sensitive in detecting impaired subjects than was the longer CWL total delayed-recall test. According to the authors, their review of the literature showed their procedure to have a higher reported sensitivity than any other published test results.

“Early detection is absolutely critical because current treatments are all geared to slow the accumulation of beta amyloid,” Shankle noted. With earlier treatment, “many patients can live out the rest of their life with no impairment or only minimal impairment.”

Just by eliminating the need for institutionalization, he added, the cost of care can be reduced by $160,000 per patient.

SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, March 29, 2005.

Yahoo! News - College May Buff Up Aging Brains

By Robert Lee Hotz Times Staff Writer

Schoolwork may strengthen the brain against some ill effects of aging, a new study on education and memory loss suggests.

In research made public Sunday, a team at the University of Toronto’s Rotman Research Institute used brain imaging to show that higher education may protect older people from faltering mental powers by building up alternate neural networks absent in less-educated people.

Elderly volunteers who had a higher education not only performed better on a series of memory tests than their less-educated peers but also used different parts of their brains, the study showed.

More years of education were associated with more active frontal lobes, areas known to be involved in problem-solving, memory and judgment, the scientists reported.

Those who treat memory loss and other maladies of the elderly have long been intrigued by evidence that an active mind might “vaccinate” the brain against Alzheimer’s disease (news - web sites) and other chronic neural disorders that may appear over time.

Learning, they suspected, might be an effective preventive medicine.

Researchers know that animal brains readily respond to stimulating, enriched surroundings by developing more intricate connections between brain cells. Until now, however, no one knew what brain mechanisms might be involved in the aging human brain.

“The frontal lobes seem to be playing an important role in this protective effect that education seems to have,” said Cheryl L. Grady, the senior scientist involved in the research project.

“It may be the more education you have, the more practice you have had using different brain strategies,” she said. “Education builds up intellectual capacity and that may come into play.”

She cautioned that other factors such as health, exercise and diet could also be responsible for the difference in mental ability.

A full report of the research appeared in the current issue of Neuropsychology, a bimonthly journal published by the American Psychological Assn.

To investigate the relationship between education and brain activity among the elderly, the researchers conducted memory tests using a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, which records the changes in blood flow associated with mental activity.

They tested 14 people between 18 and 30 years old who had between 11 and 20 years of formal schooling and 19 people over 65 who had between eight and 21 years of education. The scientists correlated brain activity to each volunteer’s age and education level.

The better-schooled volunteers were able to work around the memory problems common among the aged by drawing on mental reserves.

“We found that the older adults who were more educated tend to recruit these frontal areas of the brain,” said lead researcher Mellanie Springer at the Rotman Institute.

The elderly who had been less educated did not have such extra neural capability, nor did the younger educated volunteers, Springer said. These young brains had not yet developed the need to draw on such neural reserves.

Newswise | Ways to Delay Dementia

Newswise — Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia are not inevitable with aging.

In recent years, researchers have identified many factors that may slow or prevent the development of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. The March issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter outlines some.

* Control diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and obesity. There’s increasing evidence that these major risk factors for heart disease and stroke may also predispose people to dementia.

Vascular dementia, a common form of the illness, results from damage related to small and large blood vessel disease. By controlling cardiovascular risk factors, you may prevent the blockages and damage to the blood vessels to your brain that can lead to this condition.

* Manage depression. Like dementia, depression can cause difficulty in remembering, thinking clearly and concentrating. Sometimes, depression occurs with dementia. Treating depression won’t stop dementia from progressing, but it could help minimize its impact.

* Keep your mind sharp. Some researchers believe that lifelong learning may promote the growth of additional synapses in your brain, and, therefore, reduce the risk of dementia. Try reading, writing stories or playing cards or checkers. Or start a new hobby. Studies have found an association between frequent participation in intellectually stimulating activities and reduced risk of Alzheimer’s.

* Stay connected with friends. Spending time with family and friends, volunteering or joining a group helps stimulate your memory, concentration and mental processing.

Yahoo! News - Mental Slowing in Elderly a Tip-Off to Dementia

By Megan Rauscher

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Mild loss of mental powers in older people — the kind of slowing or forgetfulness that has often been thought of as “normal for age” — is likely the first signs of the process that leads to Alzheimer’s disease (news - web sites) or cerebrovascular disease, new research suggests.

“From a clinical standpoint, even mild loss of cognitive function in older people should not be viewed as normal, but as an indication of a disease process,” Dr. David A. Bennett, director of the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Chicago, noted in university statement.

“In particular, family members need to know that the patient has a real problem and that his behavior is not due to normal aging nor is he simply not paying attention,” he added in comments to Reuters Health.

In the medical journal Neurology, Dr. Bennett and colleagues describe 180 elderly Catholic clergy, participants in the Religious Orders Study of aging and dementia who agreed to annual mental tests beginning in 1993 and brain autopsy when they died.

At the time of death, 37 had mild cognitive impairment, 83 had dementia, and 60 had no cognitive difficulties.

Of the 37 with mild cognitive impairment, 23 showed brain pathology consistent with probable or definite Alzheimer’s disease, and 12 had areas of brain tissue due to loss of blood supply, the investigators report.

Moreover, even among the 60 individuals without cognitive impairment, 28 showed evidence of probable or definite Alzheimer’s disease.

Nonetheless, the researchers add, it’s worth noting that one third of the group, whose average was more than 80 years, did not experience cognitive decline over several years of follow-up, despite having a significant amount of Alzheimer’s disease damage.

This finding suggests that some individuals may have some type of mental reserve capacity that allows them to escape the loss of memory despite the accumulation of brain disease, Bennett’s team notes.

It also supports other data suggesting that the elderly can live to advanced old age with their cognitive faculties intact, and implies that loss of memory is not an inevitable part of aging but rather a consequence of age-related diseases.

Therefore, evidence of memory loss at any age “should be taken seriously by individuals, family members, and healthcare professionals alike,” the researchers write.

“Although there are no medications currently approved for the symptomatic treatment of mild cognitive impairment, there are things one can do to improve the environment and make it ‘more friendly’ to persons with memory loss,” Bennett told Reuters Health.

SOURCE: Neurology, March 8, 2005.

So you say you want to learn how cannibals shrink heads, but don’t want to have to buy a large pot and slave over a hot fire? Well here’s something you might want to consider. There’s an easier way, but, there’s a catch. Everyone should get checked for High Blood Pressure and treat it if they have it or take steps to prevent it if the don’t. Even young children sometimes have Hypertension, so everyone should get checked regularly.

Scoop: Hypertension Accelerates Brain Shrinkage

Hypertension Accelerates Brain Shrinkage
Monday, 28 February 2005
By Marietta Gross

Scoop Report: The normal aging process of the brain is being accelerated by high blood pressure, according to a long term survey by the Max-Planck-Institute in Berlin, Germany. Seventy two healthy adults aged between 20 and 77 underwent a magnetic resonance tomography every five years. “Hypertension is obviously even more dangerous than previously assumed. Perhaps it increases the risk for Alzheimer’s Disease”, explains study author Ulman Lindenberger.

According to the study, the human brain starts to shrink around middle age. Women are at the same risk as men and the brain volume made no difference. But the process was individually variable.

Scientists have found brain shrinkage does have gender differences associated with hypertension, and results suggest this is independent from treatment. Patients with high blood pressure showed an extreme shrinkage of memory relevant regions such as the hippocampus. The longer the patients had been suffering from high blood pressure, the more intensive the effect of shrinkage was.

Currently, Lindenberger and his colleagues are examining the connection between changes in the brain and coinstantaneous changes in psychological performance tests.