May 13th, 2022 - BOSTON (Reuters) - The state of Massachusetts on Thursday agreed to pay $56 million to resolve a lawsuit by families of veterans who contracted COVID-19 during an outbreak at a veterans' care center that killed 84 people early in the pandemic. The proposed settlement would resolve a pending federal class action lawsuit by families of veterans who died as a result of the 2020 outbreak at Holyoke...

May 9th, 2022 - Transvaginal mesh proved noninferior to native tissue repair for vaginal prolapse but missed the superiority target in an FDA-mandated, postmarket, prospective parallel-cohort study. The 36-month composite treatment success rates were 89.3% with mesh repair and 80.2% with native tissue repair, falling within the prespecified 12% margin for noninferiority but not achieving superiority. However, ...

May 9th, 2022 - Eight modifiable risk factors were linked to more than one in three cases of Alzheimer's disease and related dementia in the U.S., a cross-sectional analysis showed. The eight risk factors -- midlife obesity, midlife hypertension, physical inactivity, depression, smoking, low education, diabetes, and hearing loss -- were associated with 36.9% (95% CI 36.5-37.3) of Alzheimer's and dementia cases...

May 5th, 2022 - Genome-wide association studies have had a generally poor track record for yielding actionable information, but a new study in older adults at risk for severe osteoarthritis (OA) might allow early intervention to avoid joint replacement. Risk scores based on analysis of 47 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) identified in previous association studies significantly predicted eventual knee and...

May 5th, 2022 - The first in vitro diagnostic tool to help detect early Alzheimer's disease was authorized by the FDA on Wednesday. The assay measures the ratio of beta-amyloid 1-42 to beta-amyloid 1-40 in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). The Lumipulse G ß-Amyloid Ratio (1-42/1-40) test is intended to be used in adults 55 and older presenting with cognitive impairment who are being evaluated for Alzheimer's disease ...

May 4th, 2022 - Dementia risk was linked with blood levels of certain antioxidants, an observational study showed. Higher serum levels of lutein+zeaxanthin and beta-cryptoxanthin -- two types of carotenoids -- were tied to a lower risk of incident dementia, reported May Beydoun, PhD, MPH, of the NIH National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues, in Neurology. Findings were attenuated in ad...

May 3rd, 2022 - Multidomain interventions -- ones that combined cognitive and physical training, for example -- improved cognitive outcomes in older adults with mild cognitive impairment compared with a single intervention, a meta-analysis showed. Short-term programs composed of two or more interventions led to better global cognition and cognitive domain scores in people with mild cognitive impairment, report...

Apr 27th, 2022 - NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Frailty should not be a reason to withhold dapagliflozin in patients with heart failure (HF), researchers say. On the contrary, the SGLT2 inhibitor improves outcomes in HF patients regardless of frailty, with the greatest benefit seen in more frail patients, they report. The findings "deserve emphasis considering the common reluctance of clinicians to introduce medic...

Apr 26th, 2022 - TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese woman believed to have been the world's oldest person has died aged 119, public broadcaster NHK said on Monday, reporting the death of Kane Tanaka. Born on Jan. 2, 1903 - the year of the Wright Brothers' first controlled flight of their motor-driven airplane - Tanaka was confirmed by Guinness World Records in 2019 as the oldest living person. She died of old age at ...

Apr 25th, 2022 - Nearly 100,000 dementia cases in the U.S. could have been prevented by improving vision, a cross-sectional analysis suggested. The population attributable fraction -- the proportion of dementia cases that potentially would be prevented if a risk factor was eliminated -- of vision impairment was 1.8% in the 2018 Health and Retirement Study, representing more than 100,000 prevalent cases, wrote J...

Apr 20th, 2022 - About one in 20 adults ages 65 or older with prediabetes will progress to clinical diabetes within the following year, data from the Longitudinal Epidemiologic Assessment of Diabetes Risk (LEADR) study showed. Of more than 50,152 seniors in the study with a confirmed prediabetes diagnosis by HbA1c testing, 14.3% progressed to diabetes over a median follow-up period of 2.3 years, according to Al...

Apr 20th, 2022 - Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) seemed to neutralize the protective benefit of a certain bisphosphonate, according to a post-hoc analysis of a randomized controlled trial. Among over 5,200 community-dwelling women ages 75 and older, those who were randomized to receive clodronate didn't appear to have any reduced osteoporotic fracture risk if they were also using NSAIDs (HR 0.95, ...

Apr 19th, 2022 - Black and Hispanic military veterans in the U.S. had significantly greater dementia risk than white veterans, a large retrospective study showed. Among 1.87 million older adults -- 98% of whom were men -- who received care in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), 13% were diagnosed with dementia over 10 years, reported Kristine Yaffe, MD, of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF)...

Apr 15th, 2022 - Serum neurofilament light (NfL), a measure of axonal injury, was associated with incident Parkinson's disease, parkinsonian signs, and decline in physical functioning, a longitudinal study showed. Among 1,300 people in the Chicago Health and Aging Project (CHAP), a twofold higher concentration of serum NfL was associated with incident clinical Parkinson's disease (OR 2.54, 95% CI 1.70-3.81), ac...

Apr 13th, 2022 - A healthy lifestyle was tied to a longer life but the extra years did not mean more time living with Alzheimer's dementia, a prospective study showed. People who had four or five healthy lifestyle factors -- spanning diet, cognitive activity, physical exercise, smoking, and alcohol patterns -- at age 65 lived longer than their counterparts with zero or one healthy factors, according to Klodian ...

Apr 12th, 2022 - Motivating patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD) and intermittent claudication to start walking at home improved their exercise capacity, the MOSAIC trial showed. Six-minute walk distance improved by 16.7 m more with the physical therapist-led intervention compared with usual care alone at 3 months (from 352.9 m at baseline to 380.6 m vs 369.8 to 372.1 m, P=0.009), reported Lindsay Bear...

Apr 8th, 2022 - Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors for rheumatoid arthritis were linked with a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease and related dementia, but only in people with cardiovascular disease, data from the DREAM (Drug Repurposing for Effective Alzheimer's Medicines) study showed. Among more than 22,000 older adults, targeted disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs overall were not associated with a re...

Apr 8th, 2022 - BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's lower house of parliament on Thursday voted against a bill requiring anyone aged 60 and over to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in a defeat for Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Germany's vaccination campaign is faltering with around 76.6% of Germany's population having received at least one dose - lower than the more than 80% in other western European countries such as Franc...

Apr 7th, 2022 - Olfactory impairment, or loss of smell, significantly increased the likelihood of early death versus people with a normal sense of smell, a literature review and meta-analysis showed. The analysis of 21,600 patients yielded a pooled mortality hazard ratio of 1.52 for older adults with impaired olfactory function versus those with intact olfaction. After statistical adjustment for variations in ...

Apr 5th, 2022 - One of England's largest Trusts, the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been issued with a warning notice and ordered to make urgent improvements to a number of its services due to critical inspection findings, published today, by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The CQC carried out an unannounced inspection at a number of the Trust's services in October, with a follow-up i...