August 06, 2015

Today's Top Alzheimer's News

USA2 SPOTLIGHT 

An August 5, 2015 Huffington Post blog post by UsAgainstAlzheimer’s patient and caregiver advocates Greg O’Brien and Meryl Comer underscored the need for dementia friendly communities. According to the authors, “As communities begin to wrestle with the definition and designation of "dementia friendly," it is up to those of us in its early stages to speak with candor while we can, and for caregivers and families to define what will help the most in the face of a nation in collective denial. When it comes to dementia, no one is immune. Please don't think it won't become your story. Like those who fought long and hard for the Americans with Disability Act that we now take for granted, we all have a stake in getting "Dementia Friendly America" right.”


MUST READ

An August 6, 2015 The Washington Post article reported that a new study finds “People are developing dementia a decade before they were 20 years ago, perhaps because of environmental factors such as pollution and the stepped-up use of insecticide.” According to the article, “The study, which compared 21 Western countries between the years 1989 and 2010, found that the disease is now being regularly diagnosed in people in their late 40s and that death rates are soaring…The problem was particularly acute in the United States, where neurological deaths in men aged over 75 have nearly tripled and in women risen more than fivefold, the leader of the study, Colin Pritchard from Bournemouth University, told the London Times.”


RESEARCH, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

An August 5, 2015 Dotmed.com article reported that “New MR [magnetic resonance] software that may speed the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy and depression recently scored FDA approval.” According to the article, “MR brain images are traditionally analyzed visually by a radiologist, but when changes in the brain volume are minor it’s a time-consuming process. Even the best radiologists are not able to determine the exact volume of every structure in the brain without hours of rigorous manual calculations, according to Dr. Barton Branstetter, a neuroradiologist at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Presbyterian.”

An August 5, 2015 Fusion article reported on the potential of blood transfusions to reverse mental decline. According to the article, “In an article published in the journal JAMA Neurology this week, researcher Tony Wyss-Coray and his colleagues review the findings of theirs and others’ studies in neurology and blood transfusion so far. In their study on mice last year, they found that fresh blood from younger mice helped older mice’s brain cells to regenerate, preventing memory loss, and leading them to perform better on brain tests.”