How Much of Cognitive Decline is Actively Maintained via Dysfunctional Cell States or Signaling, and is thus Quickly Reversible?
Demonstrations in which researchers adjust cell state or signaling to reverse cognitive decline in old mice suggest that a meaningfully large fraction of this age-related cognitive decline is actively maintained via dysfunctions in cell signaling and cell activity. Senescent cells and their inflammatory signaling are a likely culprit, though it is challenging to join the dots between signaling and specific mechanisms inside cells in the highly complex environment of cellular biochemistry. The important point is that much of the decline in cognitive function could be quickly reversed if specific signals and mechanisms can b...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 8, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, December 7th 2020
In this study, except for the reduction in body weight, the aging characteristics related to epidermal and muscle tissue in mice were significantly ameliorated in the CR group compared with the control group. Additional studies have indicated that not stem cells themselves but the stem cell microenvironment is the key factor mediating stem cell activation, proliferation and differentiation.
Mitochondrial dysfunction is an important factor leading to age-related muscular atrophy. Considering the dependence of skeletal muscle on ATP, loss of mitochondrial function, which can lead to a decrease in strength and enduranc...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 6, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Towards Control Over the Dynamic Equilibrium of Bone Tissue Maintenance
Bone loses mass and strength with age, leading to the condition called osteoporosis. The extracellular matrix of bone is dynamically remodeled throughout life, built up osteoblast cells and broken down by osteoclast cells. Osteoporosis is the result of a growing imbalance in cell activity and cell creation that favors osteoclasts. There are many contributing causes, and some uncertainty of which of these causes are more or less important. The chronic inflammation that accompanies aging does appear to be important, particularly that connected to the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) of senescent cells.
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Source: Fight Aging! - December 2, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
The sequence of hormonal therapy and radiation affects outcomes in men treated for prostate cancer
A common treatment for men with intermediate-risk prostate cancer is to combine radiation with drugs that block testosterone — a hormone that makes the tumors grow faster. (This type of treatment is also called androgen deprivation therapy, or ADT).
New research is suggesting the sequence of these treatments may be crucially important.
Dr. Dan Spratt, a professor of radiation oncology at the University of Michigan, led the research. He and his colleagues pooled data from two previously published clinical trials (here and here). Taken together, the studies enrolled just over 1,000 men who had been randomly assigned to one...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - November 24, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Charlie Schmidt Tags: Living With Prostate Cancer Prostate Knowledge Treatments HPK Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, November 9th 2020
In this study, young adult mice were submitted to endurance exercise training and the function, differentiation, and metabolic characteristics of satellite cells were investigated in vivo and in vitro.
We found that injured muscles from endurance-exercised mice display improved regenerative capacity, demonstrated through higher densities of newly formed myofibres compared with controls (evidenced by an increase in embryonic myosin heavy chain expression), as well as lower inflammation (evidenced by quantifying CD68-marked macrophages), and reduced fibrosis. Enhanced myogenic function was accompanied by an increased ...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 8, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Towards the Use of High Intensity Focused Ultrasound to More Precisely Destroy Tumor Tissue
Focused ultrasound is one of the many approaches used to directly kill cancer cells once they have grown to the point at which a tumor can be identified. It involves generating sufficient heat to kill cells, a fairly direct transfer of energy. Pruning back cancerous tissue is helpful, as tumors manipulate the signaling environment to subvert the immune system's ability to destroy cancerous cells, and constantly generate new mutations that ultimately lead to metastasis and the spread of a cancer throughout the body.
Removing tumor tissue in this way is not a cure, however. Curing cancer requires not just the removal ...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 3, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Temporarily Switching up Incontinence Management Could Make Dad ’s Trip Possible
Dear Carol: My father is 72 and is in the moderate stages of dementia. Before his dementia diagnosis, he was an active hunter and fisherman. He also has incontinence issues due to prostate cancer, surgery, and treatment. This requires an external urinary attachment system to maintain an active daily life. My mother, as his primary caregiver, works diligently to keep the system and attachments clean and in working order. However, he is at the stage in his dementia journey where he is not able to maintain this attachment on his own. Yet he is defiant when we try to explain that he cannot go on trips with friends becaus...
Source: Minding Our Elders - October 26, 2020 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
The Alzheimer's Semi-Postal Stamp: It Never Goes Out Of Season
Kathy Siggins and Lynda Everman are thrilled to share the welcome news that the US Postal Service has reinstated sales of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Semipostal Stamp effective October 5, 2020. It is now available for purchase at most post offices and online at https://store.usps.com/store/product/buy-stamps/alzheimers-S_564204, and by phone at 1-800 STAMP-24.
Before it was withdrawn in November 2019, over 8.2 million stamps were sold during its two-year run raising $1,061,777 for NIH-supported research to advance better treatments, prevention, and one day, a cure of Alzheimer’s and related dementias. The reinstat...
Source: Minding Our Elders - October 10, 2020 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
New online model identifies which men can have fewer biopsies on active surveillance
This study underscores the important research that is ongoing to help minimize invasive procedures for clinically localized prostate cancer in men who opt for active surveillance,” said Dr. Marc Garnick, the Gorman Brothers Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and editor in chief of HarvardProstateKnowledge.org. Garnick added that in his practice, patients who have completely stable repeat biopsies for several years, as well as stable prostate MRI studies, are followed with a combination of “PSA values, physical exam, presence or absence of urinary symptoms, ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - October 6, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Charlie Schmidt Tags: Health Living With Prostate Cancer Prostate Knowledge HPK Source Type: blogs
Changes In Incontinence Management Could Make Dad ’s Adventure Possible
Dear Carol: My father is 72 and is in the moderate stages of dementia. Before his dementia diagnosis, he was an active hunter and fisherman. He also has incontinence issues due to prostate cancer, surgery, and treatment. This requires an external urinary attachment system to maintain an active daily life. My mother, as his primary caregiver, works diligently to keep the system and attachments clean and in working order. However, he is at the stage in his dementia journey where he is not able to maintain this attachment on his own. Yet he is defiant when we try to explain that he cannot go on trips with friends becaus...
Source: Minding Our Elders - September 30, 2020 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
Incontinence Management Changes Could Help Dad Rejoin His Friends
Dear Carol: My father is 72 and is in the moderate stages of dementia. Before his dementia diagnosis, he was an active hunter and fisherman. He also has incontinence issues due to prostate cancer, surgery, and treatment. This requires an external urinary attachment system to maintain an active daily life. My mother, as his primary caregiver, works diligently to keep the system and attachments clean and in working order. However, he is at the stage in his dementia journey where he is not able to maintain this attachment on his own. Yet he is defiant when we try to explain that he cannot go on trips with friends becaus...
Source: Minding Our Elders - September 25, 2020 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
Hormonal treatments for prostate cancer may prevent or limit COVID-19 symptoms
Men have roughly twice the risk of developing severe disease and dying from COVID-19 than women. Scientists say this is in part because women mount stronger immune reactions to the disease’s microbial cause: the infamous coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2.
Now research with prostate cancer patients points to another possible explanation, which is that the male sex hormone testosterone helps SARS-Cov-2 get into and infect human cells.
SARS-CoV-2 initiates infections by first latching onto its human cell receptor. But it can only pass into a cell with the aid of a second protein called TMPRSS2. Testosterone regulates TMPRSS...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - September 10, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Charlie Schmidt Tags: Living With Prostate Cancer Prostate Knowledge Treatments HPK Source Type: blogs
Proposed guidelines likely to identify more early lung cancers
Lung cancer is the second most prevalent cancer in the US, and the deadliest cancer killer. In 2020, an estimated 135,720 people will die from the disease — more than breast, colon, and prostate cancers combined.
I’ll never forget meeting new, advanced-stage lung cancer patients who ask if their diagnosis could have somehow been made earlier, when treatment would have been more likely to succeed. In 2009, when I began practicing thoracic oncology, there were no approved screening tests for lung cancer.
A brief history of lung cancer screening
Hope for early detection and death prevention came in 2011 with the publicati...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - September 9, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Inga Lennes, MD, MPH, MBA Tags: Cancer Lung disease Screening Source Type: blogs
Egosan Celebrates Prostate Cancer Awareness Month
Most younger men don’t spend a lot of time considering the health of their prostate. However, around the age of 50, they’ll likely find that their physicians want to check out prostate health both physically and through blood work known as a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test. The PSA is not a perfect test, but it’s still used to help detect prostate cancer since there aren’t many alternatives. National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month is meant to increase the knowledge about possible prostate problems and make certain that men get checked out regularly.
Continue reading on Egosancares blog for more a...
Source: Minding Our Elders - September 2, 2020 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
Hormonal treatments for prostate cancer are often given late
Men with advanced prostate cancer are typically treated with drugs that cause testosterone levels to plummet. Testosterone is a hormone that fuels growing prostate tumors, so ideally this type of treatment, which is called androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), or hormonal therapy, will stall the disease in its tracks.
For that to happen, ADT has to be administered correctly. But according to a new study, men frequently don’t get ADT at the proper dosing intervals. Too many of them get the treatments later then they should, causing testosterone levels to rise unacceptably. “Rapid increases in testosterone followin...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - August 20, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Charlie Schmidt Tags: Health Prostate Knowledge Treatments HPK Source Type: blogs
