Neurology
Assisting Alzheimer’s Caregivers Online
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It is estimated that Alzheimer’s disease affects 5.3 million Americans and that number is expected to double by 2050. Caregivers shoulder a particularly heavy burden as the illness alters the dementia patient’s behavior, mood and judgment, impeding his or her ability to engage in normal, everyday activities.
In response to this mounting public health challenge, experts at Weill Cornell Medical College have spent four years creating ThisCaringHome.org, an interactive, multimedia Web site for caregivers of Alzheimer’s and other dementia patients. The Web site, which received the 2009 e-Healthcare Leadership Award, helps caregivers learn strategies to better care for people with dementia, especially how to adapt the home environment to meet the behavioral and physical needs of people with Alzheimer’s.
Created by Rosemary Bakker, M.S., A.S.I.D., research associate in gerontologic design in medicine in the Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology at Weill Cornell Medical College, the site features videos, animations and photographs, as well as expert reviews of home furnishings and smart technologies. Ms. Bakker, a former caregiver to her mother, has put her first-hand knowledge to use in the creation of this Web site.
High-Fat Ketogenic Diet to Control Seizures Is Safe Over Long Term
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Current and former patients treated with the high-fat ketogenic diet to control multiple, daily and severe seizures can be reassured by the news that not only is the diet effective, but it also appears to have no long-lasting side effects, say scientists at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.
A study report supporting their conclusion, and believed to be one of the first analyses of the long-term safety and efficacy of the diet, appears online in the February edition of the journal Epilepsia.
The ketogenic diet, consisting of high-fat foods and very few carbohydrates, is believed to trigger biochemical changes that eliminate seizure-causing short circuits in the brain’s signaling system. Used as first-line therapy for infantile spasms and in children whose seizures cannot be controlled with drugs, the diet is highly effective but complicated and sometimes difficult to maintain. It can temporarily raise cholesterol, impair growth and, in rare cases, lead to kidney stones, among other side effects.
Parkinson’s disease research uncovers social barrier
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People with Parkinson’s disease suffer social difficulties simply because of the way they talk, a McGill University researcher has discovered. Marc Pell, at McGill’s School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, has learned that many people develop negative impressions about individuals with Parkinson’s disease, based solely on how they communicate. These perceptions limit opportunities for social interaction and full participation in society for those with the disease, reducing their quality of life. Pell’s research offers the public a better understanding of the difficulties these patients face – as well as an opportunity to promote greater inclusiveness.
The research was conducted in collaboration with Abhishek Jaywant, a research trainee in McGill’s Neuropragmatics and Emotion Lab, and with financial support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec.
Aging adults both with and without Parkinson’s were recorded as they described visual scenes. Their voices were then played to listeners who were unaware of the speaker’s health status. Those with Parkinson’s disease were perceived as less interested, less involved, less happy and less friendly than aging speakers without the disease. Negative impressions of their personality were specifically related to changes in the speaking voices caused by the disease, not the ability to describe the scenes.
Special suit helps kids with cerebral palsy
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Nicole was born weighing just one pound, 14 ounces. Doctors diagnosed cerebral palsy.
“As she’s getting older she’s starting to realize more that there is something different. And she wants to be able to do what the other kids do,” said Nicole’s mother, Joy.
Thanks to a special suit and intensive therapy, Nicole really can.
New approach to fighting Alzheimer’s shows potential in clinical trial
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In the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, patients typically suffer a major loss of the brain connections necessary for memory and information processing. Now, a combination of nutrients that was developed at MIT has shown the potential to improve memory in Alzheimer’s patients by stimulating growth of new brain connections.
In a clinical trial of 225 Alzheimer’s patients, researchers found that a cocktail of three naturally occurring nutrients believed to promote growth of those connections, known as synapses, plus other ingredients (B vitamins, phosopholipids and antioxidants), improved verbal memory in patients with mild Alzheimer’s.
“If you can increase the number of synapses by enhancing their production, you might to some extent avoid that loss of cognitive ability,” says Richard Wurtman, the Cecil H. Green Distinguished Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, who did the basic research that led to the new experimental treatment. He is an author of a paper describing the new results in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia.
Alzheimer’s protein may be early risk factor
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Imaging tests may be able to detect the early signs of Alzheimer’s disease long before it begins to affect memory, a finding that may lead to earlier, more effective treatments, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
They said healthy people who have an abnormal buildup of a protein in the brain linked with Alzheimer’s disease have a higher risk of developing the disease.
“Our paper shows for the time that people who during life are known to have amyloid plaques in the brain - the plaques of Alzheimer’s disease - have a very high risk of developing dementia in just a few years,” said John Morris, director of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, whose study appears in the journal Archives of Neurology.
Surgery Not Linked to Memory Problems in Older Patients
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For years, it has been widely assumed that older adults may experience memory loss and other cognitive problems following surgery. But a new study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis questions those assumptions. In fact, the researchers were not able to detect any long-term cognitive declines attributable to surgery in a group of 575 patients they studied.
“There’s a perception that people go in for surgery, and they aren’t quite the same afterward,” says first author Michael S. Avidan, M.D. “The reports of cognitive deterioration have varied, but several studies have suggested it affects many elderly people. In my experience as an anesthesiologist, I’ve found this is a very common concern.”
But Avidan, associate professor of anesthesiology and surgery, and fellow investigator Alex S. Evers, M.D., the Henry E. Mallinckrodt Professor and head of the Department of Anesthesiology, questioned those conclusions.
Researchers to Test First Gene Therapy For Alzheimer’s Patients
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Mount Sinai School of Medicine is one of 12 sites nationwide participating in the first Phase 2 clinical trial to test gene therapy treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. The study is the first multicenter neurosurgical intervention in Alzheimer’s research in the U.S.
The experimental treatment utilizes a viral-based gene transfer system, CERE-110, that makes Nerve Growth Factor (NGF), a naturally occurring protein that helps maintain nerve cell survival in the brain. CERE-110 has been previously studied in animals, where it reversed brain degeneration in aged monkeys and rats. For this study, CERE-110, will be injected by a neurosurgeon directly into the nucleus basalis of Meynert (NBM) of the brain, an area where neuronal death occurs in Alzheimer’s patients.
In animal studies, NGF has been shown to support the survival and function of the neurons that deteriorate in Alzheimer’s patients.
‘Scaffolding’ Protein Changes in Heart Strengthen Link Between Alzheimer’s Disease
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A team of U.S., Canadian and Italian scientists led by researchers at Johns Hopkins report evidence from studies in animals and humans supporting a link between Alzheimer’s disease and chronic heart failure, two of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States.
The international team of biochemists and cardiologists say they have identified three changes in the chemical make-up of a key structural protein, called desmin, in heart muscle cells in dogs. The changes led to the formation of debris-like protein clusters, or amyloid-like oligomers containing desmin, in heart muscle, similar to the amyloid plaques seen in the brain tissue of Alzheimer’s patients. The protein alterations, which were reversed by surgically repairing the heart, occurred at the onset of heart failure. Further experiments by the Hopkins scientists found the same chemical modifications to desmin in the heart muscle in four people already diagnosed with the disease.
Hybrid molecules show promise for exploring, treating Alzheimer’s
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One of the many mysteries of Alzheimer’s disease is how protein-like snippets called amyloid-beta peptides, which clump together to form plaques in the brain, may cause cell death, leading to the disease’s devastating symptoms of memory loss and other mental difficulties.
In order to answer that key question and develop new approaches to preventing the damage, scientists must first understand how amyloid-beta forms the telltale clumps.
University of Michigan researchers have developed new molecular tools that can be used to investigate the process. The molecules also hold promise in Alzheimer’s disease treatment. The research, led by assistant professor Mi Hee Lim, was published online this week in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Though the exact mechanism for amyloid-beta clump formation isn’t known, scientists do know that copper and zinc ions are somehow involved, not only in the aggregation process, but apparently also in the resulting injury. Copper, in particular, has been implicated in generating reactive oxygen species, which can cause cell damage.
Diabetics with Alzheimer’s have slower memory loss
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People who have both Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes have slower rates of memory loss than people who just have Alzheimer’s disease, French researchers said on Tuesday.
They studied 600 Alzheimer’s patients for four years and found those who had both Alzheimer’s and diabetes—about 10 percent of the total—scored far better on twice yearly memory and thinking tests than those with Alzheimer’s who did not have diabetes.
“This result was surprising,” said Dr. Caroline Sanz of the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research, whose study appears in the journal Neurology.
Relaxation Methods
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For some people, relaxing is the last thing they have on their minds. They are too busy to take the time to relax. There are not enough hours in the day to allow the time to relax. Relaxation has gotten a bad name in the recent years. People tend look at relaxing as the lazy person’s activity. But in fact, relaxation is an important part of the regenerating process for the body. Most people lead very busy lives and feel that they can’t just sit down and relax even for fifteen minutes. They work each day, take care of a family and a home or go to school. Then they need to cook, clean, shop and enjoy a social life. When do they possibly have time to relax?
Relaxation does not have to take up a large portion of your day. By giving yourself just ten to fifteen minutes each day to relax, you are boosting your health. Relaxation does not mean napping. Many people confuse the two and believe that in order to relax, you need to take a nap. Relaxation means allowing yourself a few minutes to recoup and focus on you.
There are a lot of ways in which a person can relax. What works for you might not work for the next person. Try various methods and see what you like and what you don’t.
Treatment of severe burn injuries
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Almost three quarters of patients with extensive burns die of the consequences of a severe infection. In the current edition of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2009; 106[38]: 607-13), Timo A. Spanholtz of the Cologne-Merheim Burn Center and his coauthors discuss the acute therapy and follow-up care of burn disease.
Optimal treatment of severely burned patients necessitates collaboration between primary care physicians, emergency physicians and specialist departments for plastic surgery. During first aid from the emergency physician, the patient is removed from the danger zone and is administered adequate fluid, and drugs, over several intravenous accesses. Additional first aid measures include cooling and sterile covering of the burned skin.
The Central Office for Burn Injuries in Hamburg then organizes the necessary transfer to a specialist department.
Scientists find three new gene links to Alzheimer’s
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Scientists have found three new major genetic links to Alzheimer’s, affecting up to 20 percent of people with the brain-wasting disease, and said on Sunday it was the most significant such discovery in 15 years.
Two large studies found that the three new genes join the better-known APOE4 gene as significant risk factors for the most common cause of dementia.
“If we were able to remove the detrimental effects of these genes through treatments, we could reduce the proportion of people developing Alzheimer’s by 20 percent,” Julie Williams, a professor of Neuropsychological Genetics at Britain’s Cardiff University, told a news conference in London.
Unhealthy habits alter thinking, memory skills
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If you’re having trouble remembering where you left your keys or recalling a word, mull over the number of times and how many years you’ve continued unhealthy behaviors.
Previous research has linked declining thinking and memory skills with unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, abstaining completely from alcohol, not getting enough physical activity, and not eating enough fruits and vegetables daily.
In the current study, Dr. Severine Sabia and colleagues found the more each of the 5,123 adult participants reported these behaviors the greater their “risk of cognitive deficit,” Sabia told Reuters Health in an email.
