Aging
Stroke is one of the leading causes of death worldwide and while there are obvious environmental factors such as diet, exercise and behavior, many lines of evidence suggest that the risk of stroke is heritable. Yet until now, only a small number of genes associated with stroke have been identified.
A new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation identifies two genes that underlie cerebral small-vessel disease (CSVD), a risk factor for stroke.
Ordan Lehmann and colleagues at the University of Alberta analyzed genome-wide association data from individuals that received brain MRI…
In the developed world, people are having fewer children and living longer and that has led to a population that is older than in the past.
On average, life expectancy in developed countries has risen at a pace of three months per year, and fertility has fallen below replacement rate in the majority of Europe and some other developed countries. Most academic discussion of this trend has so far focused on potential problems - when social security was young there were over 20 workers per retiree and now there are 3 - and that is without the entire Baby Boom being retired and incurring…
Good nose. Credit: Lowjumpingfrog, CC BY
By Joao Pedro de Magalhaes, University of Liverpool
Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122, remains the oldest person on record.
One might assume that she led a faultless, healthy lifestyle. Not at all. Every year on her birthday, as her celebrity grew, journalists flocked to her house in the south of France to ask her for the secret to a long life. One year she reportedly replied that it was because she stopped smoking when she turned 100.
In addition to smoking for most of her life, Madame Calment was also fond of Port wine and…
Biologists have found that increasing the amount of the gene
AMPK
that can slow the aging process throughout the entire body when activated remotely in key organ systems.
AMPK that is a key energy sensor in cells; it gets activated when cellular energy levels are low. AMPK is thought to be a key target of metformin, a drug used to treat Type 2 diabetes, and it is believed that metformin activates AMPK.
Working with fruit flies, researchers found that increasing the amount of AMPK their intestines increased lifespans by about 30 percent — to roughly eight weeks from the typical six —…
Reducing hyperactivity in kids may be as simple as getting them out to play.
Kids are full of energy so having them trapped in a classroom all day from a young age isn't easy. For some, it is bordering on impossible and many of those have been saddled with the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) label. Rather than putting kids on expensive - and in the case of Ritalin, dangerous - medications, the solution may be as simple as some play time before school starts.
Michigan State University and University of Vermont scholars studied the behavior of about 200 early…
The Institute of Medicine has recommended that clinicians minimize interventions in patients with life-limiting disease and instead focus on maximizing quality of life but more than half of nursing home residents with advanced dementia - a terminal illness marked by severe cognitive impairment and functional dependence - continue to receive medications of questionable benefit, including medications to treat dementia and lower cholesterol, at substantial financial cost.
In an Obamacare world, health care costs have gone up rather than down as promised, so policy makers are…
With age, our cells gradually lose their capacity to repair damage, even from normal wear and tear. A new paper discusses why this decline occurs in our skeletal muscle.
A team led by Dr. Michael Rudnicki, senior scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa, found that as muscle stem cells age, their reduced function is a result of a progressive increase in the activation of a specific signaling pathway. Such pathways transmit information to a cell from the surrounding tissue. The particular culprit identified by Dr. Rudnicki…
Postmenopausal women who eat foods higher in potassium, like bananas, are less likely to have strokes and die than women who eat less potassium-rich foods, according to new research in Stroke.
Yet surprisingly few do. Researchers studied 90,137 postmenopausal women, ages 50 to 79, for an average 11 years. They looked at how much potassium the women consumed, as well as if they had strokes, including ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes, or died during the study period. Women in the study were stroke-free at the start and their average dietary potassium intake was 2,611 mg/day. Results of…
For patients with advanced Parkinson disease who have involuntary movements, deep brain stimulation has been found to be an effective treatment for reducing motor disability and improving quality of life.
Some recent studies suggest that
deep brain stimulation
plus medical therapy is better than medical therapy alone for patients with Parkinson disease and early motor complications. Most clinical studies have excluded patients older than 75 years of age, although no specific age cutoff has been set.
A new study found that older patients with Parkinson disease who undergo…
Children learn many skills simply by watching people around them. Without any explicit instructions, youngsters figure out how to do things like press a button to operate the television and twist a knob to open a door.
Scholars have taken this further and found that children as young as age 2 intuitively use mathematical concepts such as probability to help make sense of the world around them.
In a study led by researchers at the University of Washington, toddlers could tell the difference between two different ways an experimenter played a game, with one strategy being more successful than…