Can controlling blood pressure later in life reduce risk of dementia?
This study was so successful at reducing the risk of mild cognitive impairment by lowering high blood pressure that it ended early, because the data and safety monitoring board felt that it was unethical to continue the control group. However, the dementia endpoint had not yet reached statistical significance — likely because of this early termination. Thus, while the study succeeded in one sense, it ultimately concluded that treating systolic blood pressure to below 120 mmHg (versus lower than 140 mmHg) did not reduce risk of dementia.
A new analysis of many studies
Because SPRINT-MIND and many other prior studies have ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - June 29, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Andrew E. Budson, MD Tags: Brain and cognitive health Healthy Aging Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, June 8th 2020
Fight Aging! publishes news and commentary relevant to the goal of ending all age-related disease, to be achieved by bringing the mechanisms of aging under the control of modern medicine. This weekly newsletter is sent to thousands of interested subscribers. To subscribe or unsubscribe from the newsletter,
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https://www.fightaging.org/newsletter/
Longevity Industry Consulting Services
Reason, the founder of Fight Aging! and Repair Biotechnologies, offers strategic consulting services to investors, entrepreneurs, and others interested in the longevity industry and its complexities. To find out m...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 7, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
The Genomic Rearchitecture of Cellular Senescence
Cellular senescence is important in aging. Cells can become senescent in response to damage, a toxic environment, or reaching the Hayflick limit on replication. Senescent cells undergo profound changes to architecture and protein expression that halt replication, cause a growth in size, and produce a potent mix of growth factors and inflammatory signals. Over the short term, this is useful. Senescent cells aid in wound healing and cancer suppression, provided that they are soon destroyed, either by programmed cell death or the immune system. With advancing age, however, senescent cells accumulate in tissues. There is too m...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 4, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Are You Experiencing Quarantine Brain?
Another term is being added to the lexicon in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic: quarantine brain. It takes many forms, from confusion and fogginess to limited executive functioning. Those who fall prey to it may find themselves unable to complete tasks, manage their time and routine, and make sound decisions. This occurs even if the person has no prior history with attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Some report a lack of motivation to get out of bed, let alone engage in their daily activities. What helps them is knowing that their boss, teachers, and family are counting on them to launch...
Source: World of Psychology - May 16, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Edie Weinstein, MSW, LSW Tags: Dreams Memory and Perception Personal Coping Skills coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic Resilience social distancing Source Type: blogs
Emotional Concussions
This morning while listening to the audiobook League of Denial, which is about the NFL’s attempts to downplay and deny the serious links between football and degenerative brain damage, it struck me that the athletes themselves were in an untenable position. Imagine trying to defend yourself while suffering the many problems of a dysfunctional brain, including memory loss, severe mood swings, and an inability to concentrate. And imagine doing this when you’ve been part of a macho culture that teaches everyone to just suck it up and deal with the pain.
Yet people are still playing football, and their brains ar...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - May 13, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Steve Pavlina Tags: Emotions Health Source Type: blogs
Your headaches are getting worse. Do you need an imaging test?
Headache is a very common condition that affects up to 60% of the world’s population. In general, headache can be classified into two main categories: primary and secondary headaches. A primary headache is related to increased sensitivities, but not structural alterations of brain tissues. Common primary headaches are migraine with and without aura, tension-type headache, and trigeminal autonomic cephalalgias (headaches, such as cluster headache, that also involve facial pain and autonomic symptoms such as tear production and nasal congestion). Secondary headaches have various underlying causes including structural vascu...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - May 7, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Hsinlin Thomas Cheng, MD, PhD Tags: Headache Tests and procedures Source Type: blogs
Remembering Deepak Lal
Ian V ásquezThe great development economistDeepak Lal, a colleague and long‐time friend to many of us at the Cato Institute, passed away at his home in London yesterday. He was 80 years old. Deepak was one of the most accomplished and impressive scholars I’ve had the privilege to know and to work with. I will miss his friendship and support dea rly.Although he was a trained economist, Deepak believed in an interdisciplinary approach to the study of developing countries. His scholarship was original, erudite, and prolific, producing more than a dozen books published by the most prestigious academic presses in...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 1, 2020 Category: American Health Authors: Ian V ásquez Source Type: blogs
Artificial Intelligence Discovers Unusual Associations in Medicine
Artificial intelligence does wonders in healthcare. The technology helped issue the first COVID-19 warning before the WHO and CDC did so. It can slash the phenomenon of alarm fatigue. IBM’s Watson Health leverages the power of A.I. to bring drugs to the market faster. And it does so while cutting costs by over 50%.
Speaking of IBM Watson, while the algorithm got its name from the company’s founder Thomas J. Watson, there’s another pop culture figure attached to that name. It’s elementary; we’re talking about none other than Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick, Dr. Watson. It seems like real-world A. I. is taking after...
Source: The Medical Futurist - March 26, 2020 Category: Information Technology Authors: Prans Tags: Artificial Intelligence AI digital health Healthcare Medicine technology Source Type: blogs
Pandemic ethics: Never again – will we make Covid-19 a warning shot or a dud?
by Anders Sandberg The Covid-19 pandemic is not the end of the world. But it certainly is a wake-up call. When we look back on the current situation in a year’s time, will we collectively learn the right lessons or instead quickly forget like we did with the 1918 flu? Or even think it was […] (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - March 21, 2020 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Anders Sandberg Tags: Ethics Health Care Public Health 1918 influenza Anders Sandberg's Posts collective amnesia collective learning Collective Responsibility COVID-19 epistemic duty Epistemic Ethics forgetting International/ Global Health memory pa Source Type: blogs
1918 Flu Pandemic & Popular Culture: Take Two
My piece on the near amnesia in U.S. culture of the 1918-19 Influenza pandemic provoked a number of helpful comments, emails and conversations. While I would stand behind the statement that it left a light footprint, there are a number of interesting cases, some of which I would never have found by conventional means. Sometimes the collective wisdom of the internet is best for uncovering things, even when you're married to someone who catalogs books for a living.Read more » (Source: Omics! Omics!)
Source: Omics! Omics! - March 20, 2020 Category: Bioinformatics Authors: Keith Robison Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, March 16th 2020
We report a new class of natural-product-inspired covalent inhibitors of telomerase that target the catalytic active site.
Age-Related Epigenetic Changes that Suppress Mitochondrial Function
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2020/03/age-related-epigenetic-changes-that-suppress-mitochondrial-function/
Today's open access research reports on two specific epigenetic changes observed in old individuals that act to reduce mitochondrial function. This joins an existing list of genes for which expression changes are known to impact mitochondrial function with age. A herd of hundreds of mitochondria are found...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 15, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Amyloid Plaques Containing Nucleic Acids Drive Neuroinflammation in Alzheimer's Disease
Alzheimer's disease is characterized by the presence of protein aggregates in the brain. These are misfolded and altered versions of proteins that can act as seeds for solid deposits to form and spread in the brain. These deposits are surrounded by a halo of toxic biochemistry that harms and eventually kills neurons. Amyloid-β aggregates are present in the early stages of the condition, while tau aggregates cause much greater harm and cell death in the later stages.
Alzheimer's disease is also an inflammatory condition, however, in which chronic inflammation and altered behavior of the central nervous system immune...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 11, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Age-Related Epigenetic Changes that Suppress Mitochondrial Function
Today's open access research reports on two specific epigenetic changes observed in old individuals that act to reduce mitochondrial function. This joins an existing list of genes for which expression changes are known to impact mitochondrial function with age. A herd of hundreds of mitochondria are found in every cell, working to provide the cell with a supply of energy store molecules used to power its operations. They are the distant descendants of ancient symbiotic bacteria, now fully integrated into the cell. Loss of mitochondrial function is strongly implicated in the progression of aging and age-related diseases, pa...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 10, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
The City of Lost Engrams
I was travelling back in time to an unreal place when The City appeared again after a long absence. It had been 16 months since we ’d been together, and The City was not pleased. A vivid image of the security lines at the airport ushered me out of town to continue my journey to The Place That Doesn’t Exist.A diabolical entanglement known as time has stolen memories from their homes in thedentate gyrus,lateral amygdala,precuneus, and elsewhere. These engrams hold the key to the past and the future. Without them – and their mysteriously stored representations – “we are condemned to aneternal present. ”Dwelling in...
Source: The Neurocritic - February 21, 2020 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
Reduced Generation of New Oligodendrocytes May Contribute to Declining Memory with Age
A number of the aspects of cognitive decline are connected to loss of stem cell activity with age, and thus reduced numbers of new somatic cells created to carry out functions in the brain. This is certainly the case for memory, but most such research is focused on neurogenesis, the process by which new neurons are created and integrated into neural circuits. Researchers here point to a different contributing population and mechanism, a reduced creation of oligodendrocytes and thus a reduced supply of myelin, the protein that sheaths nerves and is essential for their function. It is well known that myelin sheathing deterio...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 21, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
