Aging

Survey results that will be presented during Heart Failure 2019 in Athens a few weeks from now are a good opportunity to discuss facts and myths about heart disease. Including some held by cardiologists. 20 percent of believe believe, for example, that heart disease patients should avoid exercise while just over 50 percent know that exercise can be a treatment for their disease. Meanwhile, doctors are unsure about the conflict between cancer treatment and heart disease. Does cancer promote heart disease? There are common pathways in tumor growth and heart failure and some cancer therapies are…

Biogen recently announced that it was abandoning its late stage drug for Alzheimer’s, aducanumab, causing investors to lose billions of dollars. They should not have been surprised. Not only have there been more than 200 failed trials for Alzheimer’s, it’s been clear for some time that researchers are likely decades away from being able to treat this dreaded disease. Which leads me to a prediction: There will be no effective therapy for Alzheimer’s disease in my lifetime. Clinically, I am an emergency physician. But my research interests include diagnostic biomarkers, which are molecular…

Taste is a complex phenomenon. We do not experience the sensation through a single sense (as we would when we see something using our sense of sight, for example) but rather it is made up of the five senses working together to allow us to appreciate and enjoy food and drink. Initial visual inspection of food indicates if we would consider consuming it. Then, when eating, smell and flavor combine to allow us to perceive a taste. Meanwhile, the mix of ingredients, texture and temperature can further impact how we experience it. Unfortunately, this means that losing any of our senses,…

Ageism, discrimination against the elderly, has been reported in The Lancet Public Health journal as a problem for 25 percent of older people in England. And that is not truly old people, even those in their 50s face it. The repercussions are not just emotional, the study links the discrimination to worse health outcomes. Despite the known prevalence of age discrimination and existing evidence that other forms of discrimination, like racism, are linked to poorer health,  little attention is paid to ageism, which may be proof of how common it is. Considering the demographic…

The race is on to be the food craze of 2019 and the leading contenders so far are biltong - beef jerky from South Africa - and angelica keiskei koidzumi (ashitaba) from Japan. If a plant can have a leaf cut off and have it grow back the next day, why not assume eating it will help humans? Because we know more science now than 18th century soldiers did.  But once a supplement takes off, more studies showing magical benefits will be soon to follow, and Nature Communications is helping get things going - perhaps because the credit card cleared. It certainly can't have gone through real peer…

One new craze in the alternatives to medicine community is infusions of plasma from young donors, sold with the claim that it can prevent aging, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and even PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Vampires are just a story people choose to buy, like homeopathy and organic food. Plasma in blood does contain proteins that help blood clot blood but unless you are a trauma patient or have a medically diagnosed clotting condition, you are not benefiting from plasma. Outside those cases blood plasma, from the young or the old, will only, in the best…

Is your personality set in stone at a young age? If you were a jerk in high school will you still be a jerk at 60? Not necessarily. And what changes there are may not be defining. The only time you might see a big disparity could be when comparing yourself to others. Social psychologists consider personality to be five traits found across ages and cultures: conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experiences, extraversion, and emotional stability. The authors of a new study used a U.S. sample of 1,795 people that assessed their personality traits in adolescence and 50 years…

Wrinkles and hair loss are perfectly natural aspects of aging - but science is all about defeating the nature that wants to kill us off. One aspect of aging is a decline in mitochondrial function. A new study using mitochondria - the energy factories of our cells - is pushing back against nature on one front. Researchers have found that in in a mouse model, when a mutation leading to mitochondrial dysfunction is induced, the mouse develops wrinkled skin and extensive, visible hair loss in a matter of weeks. The mutation in the mouse model is induced when the antibiotic doxycycline is added to…

Blood thinning drugs are preventing 7,000 strokes each year, according to an analysis of general practice records of five million patients from 2000 to 2016 to find out how many people have a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation and how many are receiving treatment to prevent strokes.  Atrial fibrillation is the most common cause of an irregular heartbeat and five times increases the risk of stroke. To reduce the risk of stroke by around two thirds, patients with atrial fibrillation are given anticoagulant drugs to prevent blood clotting, such as warfarin.  The new study found that the…

There are numerous proponents of caloric restriction as a way to achieve longevity, and the belief has a kernel of truth - you don't often find obese centenarians - but what they leave out of the narrative is that these are mice, and they were weaned on a starvation diet. We're not going to wean human babies on a starvation diet and then expect them to do it for 110 years. They will discover In-N-Out Burgers somewhere along the way.  But while aging is going to remain the biggest risk factor for diseases like cancer, cardiovascular diseases, type II diabetes and Alzheimer's disease,…