Health and Disability

The following drugs or groups have been identified as possible Alzheimer's treatments by the study:

• High blood pressure medications - from the calcium channel inhibitors family. Research suggests these drugs may considerably decrease risk of dementia. (Example: Nilvadipine)
• Diabetes medication (exenatide and liraglutide) - that arouse the brain and decrease the formation of plaques on the brain. (a key characteristic of dementia)
• Minocycline - a tetracycline antibiotic used to treat acne.
• Acitretin - a psoriasis drug, which researchers suggest have been seen to alter the way that proteins connect to dementia structure

The investigators of this study performed a systematic review of research on existing treatments that are already approved for conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and hypertension. They put into order potential treatments for future study.

The researchers reported that tetrahydrocannabinol had double the rate of muscle stiffness relief compared to the placebo at the end of the 12-week period.

15.7% of those on placebo experienced relief from muscle stiffness, compared to 29.4% on the cannabis extract.

There was a clear difference between the effectiveness of the cannabis extract over placebo after 4 and 8 weeks. Tetrahydrocannabinol was clearly superior to the placebo in relieving pain, improving sleep quality, and reducing the symptoms of muscle spasms at all points during the trial, the researchers added.

The authors examined the impact of formal reporting of a no driving recommendation in Ontario where patients had easy access to medical services and a data reporting system that could link to emergency room records. Ontario's reporting system began paying providers for completing a warning report in 2006, thus leading to a rise in referrals. Patients who received a warning over a 4 year interval were included in the study. The incidence of emergency room visits for motor vehicle accidents in the year before referral was compared to the incidence after referral for each individual patient in a self-matched cross-over design. The result? They found a 45% reduction in the annual rate of crashes per 1000 patients after the warning (4.76 vs. 2.73).  In other words, if you told 1000 patients they were unsafe to drive, you would prevent 2 accidents.

A warning to stop driving was also associated with some potential harms. Patients warned to stop driving had greater emergency room visits for depression and made fewer visits to the referring doctor than the year before. 10% of patients made no visits the following year despite having made at least 2 visits the year prior.

A new study in The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society suggests that for newly admitted nursing home residents, homes with higher CNA staffing had a lower fall rate. The relationship between CNA staffing and falls in nursing homes needs to be studied more they suggested.

Analyzing MDS assessments of more 230,000 newly admitted nursing home residents in 2006, investigators found that 21% of new residents experienced a fall within 30 days of being admitted. Facilities that had higher CNA-to-resident ratios also had fewer falls, according to the data.

Now a team comprised of researchers from the Department of Odontology and the Aging Research Center (ARC) at Karolinska Institutet and from Karlstad University have looked at tooth loss, chewing ability and cognitive function in a random nationwide sample of 557 people aged 77 or older. They found that those who had difficulty chewing hard food such as apples had a significantly higher risk of developing cognitive impairments. This correlation remained even when controlling for sex, age, education and mental health problems, variables that are often reported to impact on cognition. Whether chewing ability was sustained with natural teeth or dentures also had no bearing on the effect.

The research is believed to be the first of its kind to use data directly from medical records to assess the impact of hospital-acquired pressure ulcers on Medicare patients at national and state levels.

According to the study, featured as the lead article in the current issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, seniors who developed pressure ulcers were more likely to die during their hospital stay, to have longer stays in the hospital, and to be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of their discharge.

They found that the risk of developing dementia during the 20 years that followed were:

• 4.8 per 100 person years among those on benzodiazepine
• 3.2 per 100 person years among those not on benzodiazepine

The researchers say that even though benzodiazepine is effective for the treatment of insomnia and anxiety, there is growing evidence that it is linked to a number of adverse outcomes among seniors, including serious falls and fractures caused by falls (however, a 2007 Harvard study found no link between benzodiazepine usage and hip fractures). Now there is another adverse outcome - the possibility of developing dementia.

The Aid and Attendance (A&A) Pension provides benefits for veterans and surviving spouses who require the regular attendance of another person to assist in eating, bathing, dressing and undressing or taking care of the needs of nature. It also includes individuals who are blind or a patient in a nursing home because of mental or physical incapacity. Assisted care in an assisting living facility also qualifies.

To qualify for A&A it needs to be established by your physician that you require daily assistance by others to dress, undress, bathing, cooking, eating, taking on or off of prosthetics, leave home etc. You DO NOT have to require assistance with all of these. There simply needs to be adequate medical evidence that you cannot function completely on your own.

In today's connected world, it's surprising to learn that more than 60% of doctors use a fax machine as a predominant form of clinician communication and only 1 in 5 doctors use a smartphone as part of their work. While email and smartphone use alone could create greater efficiencies for doctors, the promise of mHealth goes far beyond this to encompass innovations such as remote patient monitors that automatically send diagnostic information – such as fetal heart rate, blood pressure, or glucose levels – back to doctors and databases.

A 2007 study commissioned by Clarity and The EAR Foundation found older Americans fear nursing homes more than they fear death, and this sentiment has been a large driver of choice when it comes to senior housing and care options, writes Investopedia.