Public Health

Alzheimer’s disease could soon become history

Researchers from the Yale University School of Medicine have found a protein that is the missing link in the complicated chain of events that lead to Alzheimer`s disease.

Researchers also found that blocking the protein with an existing drug can restore memory in mice with brain damage that mimics the disease.

Stephen Strittmatter, the Vincent Coates Professor of Neurology and senior author of the study, said that the new discovery has given them hope that they e can find a drug that is going to work to lessen the burden of Alzheimer`s.

In earlier work, Strittmatter`s lab showed that the amyloid-beta peptides, which are a hallmark of Alzheimer`s, couple with prion proteins on the surface of neurons. By an unknown process, the coupling activates a molecular messenger within the cell called Fyn.

In the new study, the team revealed the missing link in the chain, a protein within the cell membrane called metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 or mGluR5.

When the protein is blocked by a drug similar to one being developed for Fragile X syndrome, the deficits in memory, learning, and synapse density were restored in a mouse model of Alzheimer`s.

The findings have been reported in the journal Neuron.

 

Life expectancy gap growing between rich and poor women, WHO say

Senior Woman iStockLife expectancy for women at 50 has improved, but the gap between poor and rich countries is growing and could worsen without better detection and treatment of cardiovascular disease and cancers, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

A WHO study, one of the first to analyze the causes of death of older women, found that in wealthier countries deaths from non-communicable diseases has fallen dramatically in recent decades, especially from cancers of the stomach, colon, breast and cervix.

Women over 50 in low and middle-income countries are also living longer, but chronic ailments, including diabetes, kill them at an earlier age than their counterparts, it said.

“The gap in life expectancy between such women in rich and poor countries is growing,” said the WHO study, part of an issue of the WHO’s monthly bulletin devoted to women’s health.

There is a similar growing gap between the life expectancy of men over 50 in rich and lower income countries and in some parts of the world, this gap is wider, WHO officials said.

“More women can expect to live longer and not just survive child birth and childhood. But what we found is that improvement is much stronger in the rich world than in the poor world. The disparity between the two is increasing,” Dr. John Beard, director of WHO’s department of ageing and life course, said in an interview at WHO headquarters.

BETTER PREVENTION AND TREATMENT

Beard, one of the study’s three authors, said: “What it also points to is that we need particularly in low and middle-income countries to start to think about how these emerging needs of women get addressed. The success in the rich world would suggest that is through better prevention and treatment of NCDs.”

In women over 50 years old, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), particularly cancers, heart disease and strokes, are the most common causes of death, regardless of the level of economic development of the country in which they live, the study said.

Health ministers from WHO’s 194 member states agreed on a global action plan to prevent and control non-communicable diseases at their annual ministerial meeting last May.

Developed countries have tackled cardiovascular diseases and cancers in women with tangible results, the WHO study said.

Fewer women aged 50 years and older in rich countries are dying from heart disease, stroke and diabetes than 30 years ago and these improvements contributed most to increasing women’s life expectancy at the age of 50, it said. An older woman in Germany can now expect to live to 84 and in Japan to 88 years, against 73 in South Africa and 80 in Mexico.

“That reflects two things, better prevention, particularly clinical prevention around control of hypertension and screening of cervical cancer, but it also reflects better treatment,” Beard said.

“I think that is particularly true for breast cancer where women with breast cancer are much better managed these days in the rich world. That also explains the disparity,” he said.

Low-income countries, especially in Africa, offer community services to treat diseases like AIDS or offer maternal care but many lack services to detect or treat breast cancer, he said.

In many developing countries, there is also limited access to high blood pressure medication to treat hypertension, one of the biggest risk factors for death, he added.

Women with cardiovascular disease and cancers need the kind of chronic treatment provided to those with HIV/AIDS, he said.


Read more: Fox news

 

Migraines cause long-lasting changes to brain structure

Symptoms can include a pounding headache, nausea, vomiting and light sensitivity.

Migraine may have more impacts on your mind than you may have thought at first. Scientists have discovered that migraine could have long-lasting effects on the brain’s structure.

Traditionally, migraine has been considered a benign disorder without long-term consequences for the brain,” said Messoud Ashina, one of the researchers, in a news release. “Our review and meta-analysis study suggests that the disorder may permanently alter brain structure in multiple ways.”

Migraine affects about 10 to 15 percent of the general population and the impacts associated with migraine can cause a substantial personal, occupational and social burden. Symptoms can include a pounding headache, nausea, vomiting and light sensitivity. Because there are no official “cures” for migraine, this makes living with the condition difficult. That’s why it’s important to understand exactly what might cause migraine and what its effects might be on the brain.

In order to examine the impact of migraine, the researchers reviewed six population-based studies and 13 clinic-based studies. They examined whether people who experienced migraine or migraine with aura had an increased risk of brain lesions, silent abnormalities or brain volume changes on MRI brain scans in comparison to those without the conditions.

In the end, the researchers found that migraine with aura increased the risk of white matter brain lesions by 68 percent. Migraine with no aura, in contrast, increased the risk by 34 percent. The scientists also discovered that the risk for infarct-like abnormalities increased by 44 percent for those with migraine with aura compared to those without aura. In addition, brain volume changes were more common in people with migraine and migraine with aura than those with no migraines.

“We hope that through more study, we can clarify the association of brain structure changes to attack frequency and length of the disease,” said Ashina. “We also want to find out how these lesions may influence brain function.”

Currently the researchers plan to conduct further studies to investigate these lesions and migraine further.

The findings are published in the journal Neurology.

 

 

Young women who drink face higher breast cancer risk

The researchers also found that each additional daily drink — whether beer, wine or hard liquor — raised the risk of proliferative benign breast disease by 15 percent.

Young women who drink alcohol every day may be raising significantly their risk of breast cancer, according to US research published Wednesday.

Each alcoholic drink a woman takes daily from when her menstrual periods start until her first full-term pregnancy ups her lifetime risk of breast cancer by 13 percent, said the study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The findings were based on a survey of 91,005 mothers in a major US health study from 1989 to 2009.

The researchers also found that each additional daily drink — whether beer, wine or hard liquor — raised the risk of proliferative benign breast disease by 15 percent.

The presence of these noncancerous lesions also contributes to raising breast cancer risk, according to experts at the Washington University School of Medicine.

Breast tissue cells are particularly susceptible to cancer-causing changes in youth because they grow rapidly and proliferate during adolescence and beyond, researchers said.

Another factor is the lengthening time period between the first menstrual period and the first childbirth, a trend which is likely to continue.

“Reducing drinking to less than one drink per day, especially during this time period, is a key strategy to reducing lifetime risk of breast cancer,” said study author Graham Colditz, associate director for cancer prevention at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine.

Previous research has found a link between drinking alcohol in adulthood and higher breast cancer risk.

“More and heavier drinking is occurring on college campuses and during adolescence, and not enough people are considering future risk,” said Colditz.

Health authorities say about one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime.

Risk factors include advancing age, family history of breast cancer, having dense breasts, early menstruation, late onset menopause, having a first child after age 30 or never having children, obesity and alcohol use.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/08/29/young-women-who-drink-face-higher-breast-cancer-risk/#ixzz2dWp824zx

 

 

Early diagnostic tool for Alzheimer’s comes closer to reality

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Researchers have made a new breakthrough which may not only help diagnose Alzheimer`s, but also assess its severity

Researchers have made a new breakthrough which may not only help diagnose Alzheimer`s, but also assess its severity.

Patients with Alzheimer`s disease currently undergo neuropsychological testing to detect signs of the disease. The test results are difficult to interpret and are insufficient for making a definitive diagnosis.

But as scientists have already discovered, activity in certain areas of the cerebral cortex is affected even in the early stages of the disease. Professor Tiago H. Falk of INRS`s Centre Energie Materiaux Telecommunications, specializing in biological signal acquisition, examined this phenomenon and compared the electroencephalograms (EEGs) of healthy individuals (27), individuals with mild Alzheimer`s (27), and individuals with moderate cases of the disease (22).

He found statistically significant differences across the three groups.

In collaboration with neurologists and Francisco J. Fraga, an INRS visiting professor specializing in biological signals, Professor Falk used an algorithm that dissects brain waves of varying frequencies.

Falk said that what makes this algorithm innovative is that it characterizes the changes in temporal dynamics of the patients` brain waves.

He asserted that the findings show that healthy individuals have different patterns than those with mild Alzheimer`s disease and asserted that they also found a difference between patients with mild levels of the disease and those with moderate Alzheimer`s.

The study has been published in the journal PLOS ONE.

 

Staying active ‘more important for pregnant women’

more active during pregnancy is not only important for limiting weight gain, but it also impacts the future health of the baby.

A new research has claimed that staying active throughout the day is more beneficial to limit excess weight gain for pregnant women.

Christina Campbell, an associate professor of food science and human nutrition at Iowa State University, said that they able to show that pregnant women spend 75 percent of the time they are awake in sedentary behaviors.

She said that many of these women met physical activity guidelines. But just because a women met the guidelines, doesn`t necessarily mean that they were a non-sedentary person.

Getting women to be more active during pregnancy is not only important for limiting weight gain, but it also impacts the future health of the baby.

Campbell said that if a woman gains too much, it predisposes the baby to childhood obesity and also raises the risk for maternal complications like hypertension, pre-eclampsia and postpartum obesity.

That is why it is important to help women manage their weight through diet and exercise.

Campbell said that the problem is most intervention programs are centered on physical activity guidelines of 30 minutes of exercise a day.