Tennessee’s Summitt Reveals Dementia Diagnosis

New York Times (August 23, 2011)- Pat Summitt, the longtime women’s basketball coach at Tennessee who has won more games than any other major college coach, said she forgot things at crucial points in games at times last season and struggled to keep track of when meetings were scheduled. She grew so confused that on a few days she simply stayed home from work.

It was not until after the season ended that she sought a medical diagnosis and learned she has symptoms of early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Ms. Summitt, 59, revealed the diagnosis on Tuesday, and said she planned to continue to coach. She said her doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., encouraged her to continue as long as she felt up to it.

“I plan to continue to be your coach,” Ms. Summitt said in a videotaped statement posted on the university’s Web site. “Obviously, I realize I may have some limitations with this condition since there will be some good days and some bad days.”

Ms. Summitt built a powerhouse program in Knoxville that often outshone the university’s men’s team, amassing 1,079 victories that make her the most successful Division I coach of either gender. She will enter her 38th season at Tennessee in pursuit of her ninth national title.

Long known for a steely, intense coaching style, Ms. Summitt will now also be the public face of a debilitating disease.

To read more about Pat Summitt, click the above title.

Redefining Dementia as a Terminal Illness

Time (Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009) -- Dementia is most often thought of as a memory disorder, an illness of the aging mind. In its initial stages, that's true — memory loss is an early hallmark of dementia. But experts in the field say dementia is more accurately defined as fatal brain failure: a terminal disease, like cancer, that physically kills patients, not simply a mental ailment that accompanies older age.

That distinction is largely unfamiliar both to the general public and within the medical field, yet it is a crucial one when it comes to treatment decisions for end-stage dementia patients. Dr. Greg Sachs at the Indiana University Center for Aging Research says a lack of appreciation of the nature of dementia leads to misguided and often overly aggressive end-stage treatment. Five years ago, Sachs wrote a paper on such barriers to palliative end-of-life care for dementia patients, but he ran into difficulty explaining the findings to the editors of the major medical journal that published it. "The editors kept coming back to me and saying, 'But what do the patients die of? You don't die from dementia.' And I kept saying, 'Yes, they do. That's the whole point of the paper,' " says Sachs.

Now, a large, prospective study to be published in the Oct. 15 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine goes a long way toward identifying the true course of the slow-progressing disease, which affects some 5 million Americans — a number that is expected to triple by 2050. "This is the first large study to show what specialists have been arguing for years. Dementia is a terminal illness, and patients warrant palliative care," says Sachs, who wrote an editorial that appears in the same issue of the journal.

By Catherine Elton

To view the entire article, please click on the link above.

Phone Assessment Effective For Evaluating Cognition In The Elderly

ScienceDaily (Sep. 15, 2009) — Cognitive testing by telephone in elderly individuals is generally as effective as in-person testing, according to a new study by Effie M. Mitsis, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and part of Mount Sinai's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center.

The study will appear in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

The study is the first to evaluate the effectiveness of telephone assessment in an elderly cohort using well established neuropsychological tests. Fifty-four healthy women with an average age of 79 were divided into two groups and subjected to a series of standard neuropsychological tests, including mental status questions such as identifying the day and time, remembering a series of words or numbers and naming tasks. These tests are sensitive to cognitive decline and are typically used in clinical trials of Alzheimer's Disease to monitor progression or stabilization of memory and thinking ability in elderly individuals. Both groups received in-person assessment of cognition as well as assessment by telephone.

To view the entire article, please click on the link above.

More Obesity Blues: Obese People Are At Greater Risk For Developing Alzheimer's, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2009) — Obesity is on a rampage, with the World Health Organization pegging the numbers at more than 300 million worldwide, with a billion more overweight. With obesity comes the increased risk for cardiovascular disease, Type II diabetes, and hypertension.

Now comes more discouraging news. In the current online edition of the journal Human Brain Mapping, Paul Thompson, senior author and a UCLA professor of neurology, and lead author Cyrus A. Raji, a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and colleagues compared the brains of people who were obese, overweight, and of normal weight, to see if they had differences in brain structure; that is, did their brains look equally healthy.

They found that obese people had 8 percent less brain tissue than people with normal weight, while overweight people had 4 percent less tissue. According to Thompson, who is also a member of UCLA's Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, this is the first time anyone has established a link between being overweight and having what he describes as "severe brain degeneration."

To view the entire article, please click on the link above.

Watching Stem Cells Repair The Human Brain

ScienceDaily (Aug. 21, 2009) — There is no known cure for neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. But new hope, in the form of stem cells created from the patient's own bone marrow, can be found — and literally seen — in laboratories at Tel Aviv University.

Dr. Yoram Cohen of TAU's School of Chemistry has recently proven the viability of these innovative stem cells, called mesenchymal stem cells, using in-vivo MRI. Dr. Cohen has been able to track their progress within the brain, and initial studies indicate they can identify unhealthy or damaged tissues, migrate to them, and potentially repair or halt cell degeneration. His findings have been reported in the journal Stem Cells.

To view the entire article, please click on the link above.

Middle-aged smokers at higher risk of dementia

The Guardian (4 August 2009) -- Middle-aged people who smoke, are diabetic or have high blood pressure are far more likely to suffer from dementia, research reveals today.

Smokers aged between 46 and 70 have a 70% higher risk of developing chronic memory loss, according to a study reported in Britain's Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. The chance of people with diabetes getting dementia is more than doubled because of their condition, while in those with raised blood pressure it is increased by 60% compared with people without that problem.

A separate study today shows that people may be able to ward off the onset of dementia by stimulating their brain regularly through everyday activities such as reading, writing and playing card games. That research, in the American journal Neurology, offers further evidence that mental exercise can help delay cognitive impairment.

Denis Campbell, health correspondent

To view the entire article, please click on the link above.

Midlife cholesterol levels linked to dementia

San Francisco Chronicle (August 4, 2009) -- You might want to think twice about that plate of steak and eggs.

A new study that looked at Kaiser Permanente Northern California members over a four-decade period found that even borderline to moderately high cholesterol levels in your 40s can significantly raise the chances of developing dementia later in life.

The study, published today in the journal Dementia & Geriatrics Cognitive Disorders, found the risk for developing Alzheimer's disease increased by as much as 66 percent among people with high cholesterol in midlife, a level defined as 240 or higher milligrams per deciliter (1.75 pints) of blood.

For those with just moderately high cholesterol - between 200 and 239 milligrams per deciliter - the risk of developing vascular dementia, the second-most common form of dementia after Alzheimer's, increased by 52 percent.

Victoria Colliver, Chronicle Staff Writer

To view the entire article, please click on the link above.

Chemicals Found In Fruit And Vegetables Offer Dementia Hope

ScienceDaily (July 19, 2009) — A group of chemicals found in many fruits and vegetables, as well as tea, cocoa and red wine, could protect the brain from Alzheimer’s disease, a dementia expert will tell scientists at a conference July 11.

Speaking at the British Pharmacological Society’s Summer Meeting in Edinburgh, Dr Robert Williams will argue that, while much more research needs to be done, there is mounting evidence that certain flavonoids – chemicals found in plants and food derived from plants – might provide therapeutic benefit for Alzheimer’s sufferers.

“There have been some intriguing epidemiological studies that the consumption of flavonoid-rich vegetables, fruit juices and red wine delays the onset of the disease,” says Dr Williams, a Biochemist working at Kings College London. “These reports, while not as powerful as controlled, randomised clinical trials, have encouraged a number of research groups, including our own, to investigate the biology of flavonoids in more detail.”

To view the entire article, please click on the link above.

Language Skills In Your Twenties May Predict Risk Of Dementia Decades Later

ScienceDaily (July 9, 2009) — People who have superior language skills early in life may be less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease decades later, despite having the hallmark signs of the disease, according to research published in the July 9, 2009, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"A puzzling feature of Alzheimer's disease is how it affects people differently," said study author Juan C. Troncoso, MD, with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "One person who has severe plaques and tangles, the telling signs of Alzheimer's disease in their brains, may show no symptoms affecting their memory. Another person with those same types of plaques and tangles in the same areas of the brain might end up with a full-blown case of Alzheimer's disease. We looked at how language ability might affect the onset of symptoms."

To view the entire article, please click on the link above.

Exercise and stop smoking to 'stay sharp'

The Independant (June 9, 2009) -- A recipe for staying sharp in old age has been uncovered by scientists who studied more than 2,000 men and women through their seventies and eighties.

The four key factors involved in preventing mental decline were found to be exercise, education, social activity and not smoking.

Researchers carried out a series of memory and mental tests on 2,500 men and women aged 70 to 79 over a period of eight years.

Just over half the participants showed a normal rate of age-related decline while 16% suffered a major reduction in their mental faculties.

However, 30% of the study volunteers remained unchanged and in some cases even showed an improvement in performance over the years.

The researchers then examined what lifestyle factors stood out among those people who were able to remain quick-witted in old age.

By John von Radowitz, Press Association 

To view entire article, please click on link above.

Body of Evidence

The Washington Post (May 19, 2009) -- Every year hundreds of people travel to Baltimore for an unusual purpose. They are not here to tour the city's aquarium or sample its fabled blue crabs. They are not in search of fame or money. Other than free lodging, they receive nothing in exchange for their visit, which entails a certain amount of discomfort.

No, these folks, some of whom have made this journey for decades, believe the trip is worth their time and expense because how they live -- calculated according to everything from the strength of their grip to how many apples they consume in a month -- may offer clues to how the rest of us might live better, longer, healthier lives.

These individuals -- homemakers, retirees, doctors and myriad others -- are participants in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA), the country's longest-running study of aging.

By Lori Aratani

Washington Post Staff Writer 

To view entire article, please click on link above.

At the Bridge Table, Clues to a Lucid Old Age

The New York Times (May 21, 2009) -- LAGUNA WOODS, Calif. — The ladies in the card room are playing bridge, and at their age the game is no hobby. It is a way of life, a daily comfort and challenge, the last communal campfire before all goes dark.

“We play for blood,” says Ruth Cummins, 92, before taking a sip of Red Bull at a recent game.

“It’s what keeps us going,” adds Georgia Scott, 99. “It’s where our closest friends are.”

In recent years scientists have become intensely interested in what could be called a super memory club — the fewer than one in 200 of us who, like Ms. Scott and Ms. Cummins, have lived past 90 without a trace of dementia. It is a group that, for the first time, is large enough to provide a glimpse into the lucid brain at the furthest reach of human life, and to help researchers tease apart what, exactly, is essential in preserving mental sharpness to the end.

To view entire article, please click on link above.