Saturday, March 12

Racial disparities exist in elderly depression treatment

Clinical Psychiatry News - LINK

Residency Programs Not Preparing Students for Geriatric Population

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Regular exercise could decreases Alzheimer's risk by 50%

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Osteoporosis patients should be screened for celiac disease, study says

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Friday, March 11

Gene Mutation Linked to Elderly Blindness

Yahoo! Health News: Gene Mutation Linked to Elderly Blindness

New trials for counseling caregivers and patients with Alzheimer's begin

LINKThree studies are underway at the NYU School of Medicine to find out whether short-term counseling can ease the psychological stress and depression of people with Alzheimer's disease and their family members.

Dementia Assessment Should Include Cardiovascular Issues

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Drugs Used To Treat Alzheimer's In Nursing Homes Are Worsening Sufferers' Illness

sciencedaily.com----LINKQuetiapine, a drug commonly used in nursing homes to treat agitation and related symptoms in people with Alzheimers' disease actually worsens patients' illness, speeding up their rate of decline significantly, says a paper published on bmj.com today.

Accuracy of Self-Reported Depression in Persons with Dementia - J Am Geriatr Soc, Vol 53, Issue 3, pp. 389-396 (Abstract)

LINK: "The results of this investigation suggest that the presence of dementia per se does not predict inaccurate depression self-reports. Deficit awareness, which covaries with dementia, appears to account for the majority of the variance in self-report accuracy. These findings were stable across informant- and clinician-rated depression criteria and multiple analyses."

Yahoo! Health News: Busy Minds May Slow Alzheimer's

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Wednesday, March 9

When Communication Experiences a Setback

LINK"In this new collection of extracts from his book "How to Say It to Seniors", David Solie offers advice for the times when our best efforts to help a senior run into trouble."

MayoClinic.com - Heart surgery: Can it cause dementia?

LINKHeart surgery doesn't cause dementia. But it may worsen any pre-existing mental decline, including early dementia. The cause of these cognitive changes isn't known. Some have speculated that the brain may be affected by tiny blood clots or debris released into the bloodstream from the aorta. But this theory remains unproved.

Mild impairment called a signal of Alzheimer's

LINK FOR FULL ARTICLEThe discovery of an early stage of Alzheimer's disease may drive up the number of Americans thought to have the memory-robbing disorder by 100 percent or more, researchers at Chicago's Rush University reported Monday in the science journal Neurology.

Mild cognitive impairment, in which a person has increasing difficulty forming new memories, had been considered a normal part of aging but now appears to be an indicator of Alzheimer's disease, said the study's lead author, Dr. David A. Bennett, director of the Alzheimer's Disease Center at Rush.

The researchers emphasized, however, that most people who worry about losing their memory as they age are not suffering from creeping Alzheimer's.