January 9, 2007, 9:26 PM CT

Education Does Not Protect Against Age-related Memory Loss

Adults over 70 with higher levels of education forgot words at a greater rate than those with less education, as per a new study from the University of Southern California.

The findings, reported in the current issue of Research on Aging, suggest that after age 70, educated adults may begin to lose the ability to use their schooling to compensate for normal, age-related memory loss.

Study director Eileen Crimmins of the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology says she wouldn't recommend halting any schooling based on the results. But they help us understand the way we learn and unlearn as we age.

"We are starting to find evidence of how the brain works over the entire lifecycle," said Crimmins. "This study clarifies that while cognitive performance in old age is correlation to early life education; not all aspects of cognitive performance relate to education in the same way".

More education is consistently correlation to better cognitive performance in elderly adults and in this study, too, individuals with higher levels of education had a higher ability at any given age. However, it was those with the highest education whose performance dropped the most.

"Even though we find in this research that those with higher education do better on mental status tests that look for dementia-like symptoms, education does not protect against more normal, age-related declines, like those seen on memory tests," said lead author Dawn Alley of the University of Pennsylvania, who conducted the research while a doctoral student at the USC Davis School.........

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January 9, 2007, 8:54 PM CT

Caffeine Cuts Post-workout Pain

Although it's too soon to recommend dropping by Starbucks before hitting the gym, a new study suggests that caffeine can help reduce the post-workout soreness that discourages some people from exercising.

In a study would be published in the recent issue of The Journal of Pain, a team of University of Georgia researchers finds that moderate doses of caffeine, roughly equivalent to two cups of coffee, cut post-workout muscle pain by up to 48 percent in a small sample of volunteers.

Lead author Victor Maridakis, a researcher in the department of kinesiology at the UGA College of Education, said the findings may be particularly relevant to people new to exercise, since they tend to experience the most soreness.

"If you can use caffeine to reduce the pain, it may make it easier to transition from that first week into a much longer exercise program," he said.

Maridakis and his colleagues studied nine female college students who were not regular caffeine users and did not engage in regular resistance training. One and two days after an exercise session that caused moderate muscle soreness, the volunteers took either caffeine or a placebo and performed two different quadriceps (thigh) exercises, one designed to produce a maximal force, the other designed to generate a sub-maximal force. Those that consumed caffeine one-hour before the maximum force test had a 48 percent reduction in pain compared to the placebo group, while those that took caffeine before the sub-maximal test reported a 26 percent reduction in pain.........

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January 9, 2007, 5:06 AM CT

Antibody therapy prevents type 1 diabetes in mice

University of Pittsburgh scientists have successfully prevented the onset of type 1 diabetes in mice prone to developing the disease using an antibody against a receptor on the surface of immune T-cells. According to the investigators, these findings, which are being published in the recent issue of the journal Diabetes, have significant implications for the prevention of type 1 diabetes.

More than 700,000 Americans have type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disorder in which the body errantly attacks the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, causing chronically elevated levels of sugar in the blood, leading to blindness, kidney failure, heart disease and nerve damage. Previously known as juvenile diabetes, type 1 diabetes is usually diagnosed at a very early age, but in some cases it can be diagnosed in adulthood.

In this study, the Pitt researchers treated non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice with an antibody -- a type of protein produced by the immune system that recognizes and helps fight infections and other foreign substances in the body -- directed against a receptor known as CD137 on the surface of a type of immune cell called T-cells. Treating NOD mice with the anti-CD137 antibodies significantly suppressed the development of diabetes, whereas most of the control mice developed diabetes by the time they were six months old.........

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January 8, 2007, 9:44 PM CT

Jefferson Cardiologists Fix Broken Heart

Unexplained chest pain after a heart attack might be more dangerous than many physicians originally think.

In a case study would be published in the recent issue of the international journal Clinical Cardiology, physicians at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia report on a seemingly healthy 55-year-old man who had a silent heart attack and subsequent unexplained chest pain.

Once he was admitted to the hospital, it was discovered that the man actually had a rarely diagnosed complication called subepicardial aneurysm, which, if not quickly treated, could be fatal.

"The chest pain was a rupture of the heart wall about to happen--the most feared complication of a heart attack," explains Michael Savage, M.D., director, Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. "The rupture occurs from a tear in the muscle that has already been damaged by a heart attack. The heart muscle breaks and the wall bursts usually causing cataclysmic death soon after".

The Jefferson researchers recommend that when a patient experiences unexplained pain after a heart attack, physicians should consider the possibility of a subepicardial aneurysm.

Diagnosis of a subepicardial aneurysm is extremely rare, says Dr. Savage, who is also associate professor of Medicine, Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. Only 20 cases have ever been reported in the medical literature and many patients were diagnosed after death. It is highly likely that many more patients have died from this complication but the cause of death was unrecognized.........

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January 8, 2007, 9:41 PM CT

Obese Patients Fair Better

Researchers report that for patients hospitalized with acute heart failure, a higher body mass index (BMI) was associated with a substantially lower in-hospital mortality rate. For every 5-unit increase in body mass, the odds of risk-adjusted mortality fell 10 percent. The finding held when adjusted for age, sex, blood urea nitrogen, blood pressure, and additional prognostic factors.

IMPACT: The finding offers more insight into an observed phenomenon in chronic heart failure called the 'obesity paradox.' This is the first study to document that this inverse relationship with BMI holds in the setting of acute hospitalization for heart failure. Further study is required but the finding suggests that nutritional/metabolic support may have therapeutic benefit in specific patients hospitalized with heart failure.

BACKGROUND: The study found that by weight category, in-hospital mortality rate was 6.3 percent for underweight, 4.6 percent for healthy weight, 3.4 percent for overweight and 2.4 percent for obese patients. "The study suggests that overweight and obese patients may have a greater metabolic reserve to call upon during an acute heart failure episode, which may lessen in-hospital mortality risk," said Fonarow. Obesity is a known risk factor for developing heart disease and heart failure and every effort should be made to avoid it, but once heart failure has manifested, this paradox seems to occur. Researchers utilized data on over 100,000 acute heart failure patient episodes, taken from the Acute Decompensated Heart Failure National Registry (ADHERE). The study and ADHERE is funded by Scios, Inc. The authors have received research grants and served as consultants for Scios.........

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January 8, 2007, 9:07 PM CT

Limited Options For Backup Hiv Treatment

Thai scientists have discovered that patients who fail therapy with a usually used, inexpensive, first-line antiretroviral treatment (ART) are also commonly resistant to other, similar drugs, leaving progressively fewer options for replacement therapies. Since catching therapy failure early is key to preventing further resistance, this research, reported in the Feb. 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases and currently available online, also argues for greater access in the developing world to tests that detect when the amount of virus in a patient's blood is increasing.

Combined antiretroviral treatment has dramatically changed the course of HIV disease, with a substantial reduction in illness and death both in developed and in developing nations. In Thailand, where a 2004 estimate put the number of HIV-infected people at 600,000, a generic, fixed-dose, combined pill of three antiretroviral agents has been available since 2002. In 2004, it was estimated that 60,000 Thai citizens would take this combination of stavudine, lamivudine, and nevirapine, known as d4T/3TC/NVP.

Lead author Somnuek Sungkanurparph, MD, of Ramathibodi Hospital in Thailand, and co-authors observed that when this combination stopped working, it was nearly always because the virus had developed mutations that also make useless several other drugs of the same type.........

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January 7, 2007, 8:32 AM CT

MRI Of The Ankle Changes Patient Treatment

MR imaging can make a dramatic difference in the management of patients with ankle pain, changing treatment in about one-third of the patients, a new study finds.

The study, of 91 patients, found that MR changed the management plans of 35% of patients, said Philip W.P. Bearcroft, MD, of Cambridge University Hospitals in England. "This is itself is significant, but more significant is the fact that before an MRI was done, 65 of the 91 patients were scheduled to undergo surgery. After an MRI was done, nine of those patients were treated nonsurgically," Dr. Bearcroft said.

Dr. Bearcroft and his colleagues conducted the study in conjunction with an orthopedic foot and ankle surgeon at a regional teaching hospital. The surgeon noted his proposed treatment plan for each patient before and after an MR examination. The surgeon also noted the potential diagnoses for each injury. Before an MR examination was done, the surgeon indicated an average 2.3 possible diagnoses per patient. "After MRI was performed, the number of diagnoses per patient was reduced to 1.2," said Dr. Bearcroft. MRI increased the referring physician's confidence in his diagnoses, Dr. Bearcroft said. "In 66% of the MRI examinations performed, the referring surgeon felt that his understanding of the patient's disease had either depended upon or had been substantially improved by MRI," he added.........

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December 28, 2006, 8:37 PM CT

Transplant Right On Time

In hemophilia, a mutated gene prevents the production of a critical blood-clotting protein. Treatments for hemophilia and other such genetic diseases, when they exist, may consist of risky blood transfusions or expensive enzyme replacement treatment. But what if the body could be induced to begin producing these proteins, say by transplanting healthy tissue with the abilities that are lacking?

Prof. Yair Reisner and Ph.D. student Anna Aronovich of the Weizmann Institute's Immunology Department, together with colleagues, showed, in research recently reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), how such a transplant might, in the future, be made feasible.

Prior attempts to treat genetic disease by transplanting (mother to daughter) a spleen, an organ that can manufacture many the missing proteins in some such diseases, had made little headway due to the fact that the spleen is home to the immune system's T cells - cells responsible for the severe immune responses against the recipient known as graft-versus-host disease (GVHD).

Reisner and his team revived the idea, with a twist. Over the past several years, he and members of his lab have been experimenting with tissue transplanted from pig embryos - a possible substitute for human donor organs. From this, they have learned that for each type of tissue, there is a window of opportunity during which cells taken from the developing embryo can be most successfully transplanted. Tissues taken too early, when they are still fairly undifferentiated, may form tumors, while those taken too late can be identified as foreign, causing the host to reject them.........

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December 26, 2006, 7:54 PM CT

Incidence Of Stroke Decreasing

The incidence of stroke in the U.S. over the past 50 years has declined, although the severity of stroke has not, according to a study in the December 27 issue of JAMA.

Stroke continues to be a major public health concern, with more than 750,000 new strokes occurring each year in the United States. It is the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer and the leading neurologic cause of long-term disability, according to background information in the article. Prior estimates of long-term trends in the incidence and severity of stroke have varied. Determining trends could help guide health programs, public policy, and the allocation of research funding.

Raphael Carandang, M.D., of Boston University, and colleagues examined data from the Framingham Study (health study, with participants initially recruited in 1948) to determine long-term trends in the incidence, lifetime risk, severity, and 30-day risk of death from clinical stroke. This study included 9,152 Framingham Study original participants and offspring undergoing follow-up for up to 50 years over three consecutive time-periods (1950-1977, 1978-1989, and 1990-2004), with ascertainment of stroke risk factor data every 2 years and active surveillance for occurrence of stroke or death.

The researchers found that the age-adjusted annual incidence of clinical stroke and atherothrombotic brain infarctions (ABI) in participants age 55 to 94 years decreased over the 3 periods. The incidence of clinical stroke decreased significantly. Across the 3 periods, the lifetime risk of clinical stroke (by age 90 years) decreased from 19.5 percent to 14.5 percent in men age 65 years and from 18.0 percent to 16.1 percent in women. Age-adjusted stroke severity did not vary across periods; however, death within 30 days of stroke decreased significantly in men (from 23 percent to 14 percent) but not significantly in women (from 21 percent to 20 percent).........

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December 26, 2006, 7:32 PM CT

Pet Owners Are Sick More Often

A common perception is that pet owner is a young person who is full of action, exercises a lot, and actively plays with a pet, especially with a dog. The reality is different, however.

The association of pet ownership and health of working aged Finns (20-54 years of age) was studied at the University of Turku as part of a large research project entitled Health and Social Support (HeSSup). The findings were published in PLoS ONE, the new international online publication of the Public Library of Science.

At the total population level, pet ownership was most common among those 40 years of age or older, those whose lives are established and who are settled down as well as among those who live in single family houses and who have couple relationships. Pet ownership was slightly more often linked to a low rather than high social standing or education. Four of five people working in agriculture had a pet, with 41% of those representing other occupational groups having one.

Pet owners are part of the population group that based on their age or low socio-economic standing has plenty of different kinds of illness or disease related risk factors, including a greater Body Mass Index (BMI) than the rest. In this study, they smoked slightly more often and exercised less often than those not having pets. Dog owners did exercise more than those not having a dog, but it did not have an effect on the BMI. Pet owners in general had hobbies linked to hunting or moving about in nature more often than the rest.........

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