A dearth of data about online dating in later life prompted two Bowling Green State University gerontologists to look into the phenomenon.

In their research, Drs. Wendy K. Watson and Charlie Stelle aim to increase the quantity and improve the quality of information available about dating in later life, and in this case, online dating.

Although the research is in the early stage, Watson and Stelle are finding that older adults appear to market themselves differently on online dating sites than younger adults.

Most notable is the absence of physical appearance (looks) and status. Evidence suggests the senior population appears to be more interested in honest self-representation, compatibility and companionship rather than discussing areas such as sexual prowess and nightlife.

The researchers found traditional online coding terms used to describe younger generations seem to “miss some key elements relevant for ads placed by older adults.”

Watson and Stelle suggest online sites geared at those over 60 might want to consider adding personal characteristics such as affection, intelligence, independence, purpose and goals, religion and spirituality, political beliefs, health and status.

Interestingly, the language of seniors’ online ads was different when describing themselves and what they were looking for in a relationship. Terms such as “young at heart” and “active” were used to show physical fitness and good health.

In previous research on dating in later life, Watson and Stelle found that older women had specific expectations regarding dating.

Watson said women don’t have a need that has to be filled. “Instead their philosophy is: ‘Please don’t waste my time,’” she said.

“They are less likely to play games,” Stelle said. “They want to make a decision quickly and cut their losses, because they have learned life is too short for dating games.”

In the future, Watson and Stelle will continue their research and expand the analysis within the match.com and ourtime.com dating sites.

The experts say their findings show that the desire to find love and a companion to share life with has no expiration date.

Source: Bowling Green State University

Eledrly lady on a computer photo by shutterstock.

This is the first study that has linked beta-arrestin to Alzheimer’s and learning and memory.

Beta-arrestin is expressed in various cells of the body, including the hippocampus, an area of the brain connected to learning and the formation of short-term memories. Beta-arrestin is one of many “scaffolding proteins”—proteins that support neuron connections.  The absence of beta-arrestin has been shown to impair normal learning in mice.

In the hippocampus, new connections called synapses continue to form between neurons. When the brain learns something new, connections are formed and some old ones are strengthened through a process known as long-term potentiation (LTP).

However, since brains have only a limited capacity, other old connections must disassemble through a process called long-term depression (LTD) in order for new synapses to form.

Beta-arrestin ensures the plasticity of synaptic connections and LTD by regulating the “actin cytoskeleton,” a network of proteins that shapes the “backbone” of neurons and helps form new synaptic connections and disassembles old ones.

“In some pathological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, loss of the old synaptic connections far exceeds the formation of new ones, resulting in overall loss of synapses and short-term memory loss,” said Iryna M. Ethell, an associate professor of biomedical sciences and the lead author of the research paper.

“Our work, done on mice, shows that if beta-arrestin is removed from neurons, this loss of synapses is prevented. But we also know that beta-arrestin is required for normal learning and memory; so a fine balance needs to be established. This balance could be easily achieved by pharmaceutical drugs in the future.”

Beta-arrestin can be visualized as energy given to a puppeteer (actin cytoskeleton) who controls the strings of a puppet (interneuronal connection), explains Ethell. In order for a person to learn something, the puppeteer needs to move the strings in a specific order.

However, in patients with Alzheimer’s, this energy supply overactivates and the strings are pulled in a disorderly fashion that results in the strings being broken (loss of synapses) and the puppets collapsing. Although the removal of beta-arrestin would avoid this collapse, a complete loss of the protein would result in no movement of the puppets at all (no learning in the brain).

“A selective tuning of beta-arrestin activity is therefore necessary to partially reduce synapse disassembly,” said Crystal G. Pontrello, the first author of the research paper and a postdoctoral researcher in Ethell’s lab. “What you want, ideally, is the elimination of only some unused old synaptic connections so that there is room to make new connections.”

The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Source: University of California-Riverside

The researchers compared 68 age- and sex-matched, case-control pairs from their research in Jamaica, where UTHealth has been studying autism in collaboration with The University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica.

“This should put to rest discrepancies in previous studies showing that just maternal age or just paternal age are linked to having a child with autism,” said Mohammad Hossein Rahbar, Ph.D., principal investigator and professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at The University of Texas School of Public Health, part of UTHealth. “Our results revealed that the age of the father and the mother are jointly associated with autism in their children.”

The study found that mothers who had children with autism were on average 6.5 years older than women who did not have a child with autism. The corresponding age difference for fathers was 5.9 years.

Previous studies used statistical models that made it hard to assess both maternal and paternal age as joint risk factors, a problem called multicollinearity, Rahbar said, noting he was able to use more complex statistical models to avoid the problem.

The research was published this month in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Source: The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth)

Needless to say, a pessimistic assessment goes hand in hand with an increased risk of illness or death. It can be assumed that on average people who rate their health as poor have an unhealthier lifestyle, are often in a fragile state of health or are already sick.

However, earlier studies that only monitored the participants for a few years after the survey reveal that the correlation persists even if these factors are taken into account.

In the new study by researchers at the University of Zurich, investigators demonstrated that self-rated health is also linked to the probability of survival or death over a long period of more than thirty years.

In the study, which was conducted in Switzerland, men who rated their health as “very poor” were 3.3 times more likely to die than men of the same age who rated their health as “excellent”, and the risk of death was 1.9 times higher in women who rated their health as “very poor” than for those who rated it as “excellent”.

Here, the risk increased steadily from an optimistic to a pessimistic rating: people in “excellent” health had better chances of survival than those in “good” health, the latter better chances than those in a “fair” state of health, and so on.

“The steady increase in risk and the long time of over thirty years between the self-rating and the end of the observation period render it practically impossible for medical history or a dark foreboding to be main causes of the correlation observed,” explains head of the study Matthias Bopp.

When investigators statistically removed confounding variables, such as education levels, marital status, tobacco-related strains, medical history, the use of medication, blood pressure and blood glucose into account, the correlation between self-rated health and mortality only remained strong.

The difference in the risk of death between the best and the worst rating was still 1:2.9 in men and 1:1.5 in women.

“Our results indicate that people who rate their state of health as excellent have attributes that improve and sustain their health,” concludes specialist in preventive medicine David Fäh.

“These might include a positive attitude, an optimistic outlook and a fundamental level of satisfaction with one’s own life.”

The results of the study support the broad concept of health advocated by the World Health Organization not as the absence of disease, but rather as complete physical, mental and social wellbeing.

In the future, investigators hope that an individual’s uncertain view of health will trigger positive holistic strategies to improve an individual’s outlook on life.

“Good doctors should therefore not just look for the presence of risk factors or diseases, but also check which health resources their patients have and boost and consolidate them if need be,” says David Fäh.

Source: University of Zurich

Elwely woman and doctor looking out window photo by shutterstock.

Two new studies, presented at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), suggest understanding an individual’s mental health status is an important factor for achieving the best outcome after surgery.

The knowledge is meaningful for obtaining improved clinical and generic (patient-satisfaction) outcomes — two measures that will influence future reimbursement schedules for surgeons.

One paper, derived from a study of 97 men and women who received minimally invasive total knee replacement (TKR) surgery, suggested men with anxiety traits — defined as a high level of anxiety unrelated to a stressful event — had higher post-operative pain ratings resulting in longer hospital stays. Women were found to generally report higher post-operative pain levels than men, and women were consistently less satisfied with pain control.

However, researchers found that some old presumptions did not hold up to the new findings. Specifically, postoperative pain or pain medication use in either men or women was not linked to reports of anxiety or even “catastrophizing” (an extreme response to stress).

In the next paper, reporting on a study of 1,657 patients receiving hip replacement surgery, researchers discovered patients taking antidepressants up to three years prior to undergoing a total hip replacement (THR) were more likely to report greater pain before and after surgery and less satisfaction with their procedure.

Approximately 215 patients were using antidepressants three years before the surgery.

In this study, patients were surveyed before and one year after the THR. The investigators found that a patient’s mental health status, assessed by the use of antidepressants before surgery, was a significant factor in predicting outcomes, as well as gender (men are more likely to report lower outcomes), advanced age and co-morbidity (other joint diseases or conditions which affect walking).

In summary, researchers believe a patient’s mental health status should be assessed prior to surgery and taken into consideration during post-operative care.

Source: American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons

Knee in brace photo by shutterstock.

In the brain cells of people with Alzheimer’s, tau proteins combine into twisted structures known as “neurofibrillary tangles.” The presence of tangles defines the condition as Alzheimer’s.

However, although the tangles confirm Alzheimer’s, their precise role in Alzheimer’s pathology has long been a point of contention among researchers.

New research on the intermediary steps between a single tau protein unit and a neurofibrillary tangle confirms the significance of tau to Alzheimer’s. Scientists now believe the conglomeration of two, three, four, or more tau proteins — known as “oligomers” — are the most toxic entities in Alzheimer’s.

“What we discovered is that there are smaller structures that form before the neurofibrillary tangles, and they are much more toxic than the big structures,” said Rakez Kayed, University of Texas Medical Branch.

“And we established that they were toxic in real human brains, which is important to developing an effective therapy.”

According to Kayed, a key antibody enabled the research team to produce a detailed portrait of tau oligomer behavior in human brain tissue. The anitbody made it possible for researchers to use a variety of analytical tools to compare samples of Alzheimer’s brains with samples of age-matched healthy brains.

“One thing that’s remarkable about this research is that before we developed this antibody, people couldn’t even see tau oligomers in the brain,” Kayed said.

“With the antibody — called T22 — we were able to thoroughly characterize them, and also study them in human brain cells.”

Among the researchers’ most striking findings: in some of the Alzheimer’s brains they examined, tau oligomer levels were as much as four times higher as those found in age-matched control brains.

Other experiments revealed specific biochemical behavior and structures taken on by oligomers, and demonstrated their presence outside neurons — in particular, on the walls of blood vessels.

Investigators believe the discovery will foster renewed studies on Alzheimer’s. “We think this is going to make a big impact scientifically, because it opens up a lot of new areas to study,” Kayed said. “It also relates to our main focus, developing a cure for Alzheimer’s. And I find that very, very exciting.”

Source: University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

Researchers discovered cases where large or small DNA segments change direction, are duplicated, or become completely lost. The changes were mainly discovered in older twins.

This finding may help to explain why the immune system is often impaired in older age.

Uppsala University researchers explain that during a person’s life, continuous alterations in the cells’ DNA occur. The alterations can be changes to the individual building blocks of the DNA but more common are rearrangements where large DNA segments change place or direction, or are duplicated or completely lost.

In the current study, scientists examined normal blood cells from identical (monozygotic) twins in different age groups and looked for large or smaller DNA rearrangements.

The results showed that large rearrangements were only present in the group older than 60 years.

The most common rearrangement was that a DNA region, for instance a part of a chromosome, had been lost in some of the blood cells. Certain, almost identical, rearrangements were found in several individuals and some of these could be associated with a known blood disease in which the bone marrow’s capacity to produce new blood cells is disturbed.

Rearrangements were also found in the younger age group. The changes were smaller and less complex but the researchers could also in this case show that the number of rearrangements correlated with age.

Investigators were surprised to find that as many as 3.5 percent of healthy individuals older than 60 years carry such large genetic alterations.

The discovery sets the stage for a better understanding of disease development in older age.

Scientists believe that this type of acquired genetic variation might be much more common, says Jan Dumanski, professor at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology and one of the authors of the paper.

A key to the potential association between DNA changes and alterations to our immune system is the understanding that although we possess a variety of blood cell types, only white blood cells contain DNA.

This distinction is important as researchers believe an increased number of WBC cells with DNA alterations can damage or alter the immune system.

Specifically, the genetic alterations lead to an increased growth of the cells that have acquired them; these cells will increase in number in relation to other white blood cells.

The consequence might be a reduced diversity among the white blood cells and thereby an impaired immune system.

Researchers have published the findings online in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Source: Uppsala University

Currently, experts do not fully understood why the brain’s cognitive functions such as memory and speech decline as we age. This despite the realization that cognitive decline can be detected before an individual reaches age 50.

Neuroscientists Andy Randall, Ph.D. and Jon Brown, Ph.D. from the University of Bristol have identified a novel cellular mechanism that causes changes to the activity of neurons — an action which may contribute to cognitive decline during normal healthy aging.

The brain largely uses electrical signals to encode and convey information. Modifications to this electrical activity are likely to cause age-dependent changes to cognitive abilities.

The researchers examined the brain’s electrical activity by making recordings of electrical signals in single cells of the hippocampus, a structure with a crucial role in cognitive function. By doing this, they were able to assess “neuronal excitability” – the ease with which a neuron can produce brief, but very large, electrical signals called action potentials.

An action potential occurs in practically all nerve cells and is essential for transmission of a signal or communication within all the circuits of the nervous system.

Action potentials are triggered near the neuron’s cell body and once produced, travel rapidly through the massively branching structure of the nerve cell, along the way activating the synapses the nerve cell makes with the numerous other nerve cells to which it is connected.

Researchers discovered the hippocampal neurons within an aged brain have trouble generating action potentials.

Furthermore, they demonstrated that this relative reluctance to produce action potential arises from changes to the activation properties of membrane proteins called sodium channels. The sodium channels influence the rapid initiation of the action potential by allowing a flow of sodium ions into neurons.

Randall, a professor in applied neurophysiology, said: “Much of our work is about understanding dysfunctional electrical signaling in the diseased brain, in particular Alzheimer’s disease.

“We began to question, however, why even the healthy brain can slow down once you reach my age. Previous investigations elsewhere have described age-related changes in processes that are triggered by action potentials, but our findings are significant because they show that generating the action potential in the first place is harder work in aged brain cells.

“Also by identifying sodium channels as the likely culprit for this reluctance to produce action potentials, our work even points to ways in which we might be able modify age-related changes to neuronal excitability, and by inference cognitive ability.”

The findings are published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

Source: University of Bristol

Researchers believe knowledge of the association could pave the way for aggressive therapies to minimize risk for stroke.

In the study, researchers found that people who died after stroke had more severe memory loss in the years before stroke compared to people who survived stroke or people who didn’t have a stroke.

“We’re most surprised that people who died after strokes had such sharp memory declines years before stroke onset,” said Qianyi Wang, the study’s lead author and a graduate student at the Harvard University School of Public Health in Boston, Mass.

Researchers examined 11,814 people age 50 years and older every two years for signs of declining memory. Study participants were stroke-free at enrollment and were followed up to 10 years.

A unique feature of this study is that participants continued in the study after surviving a stroke. Over the 10-year period, investigators documented 1,820 strokes, including 364 individuals who died after stroke but before the next memory assessment.

Average memory loss each year was compared for participants who remained stroke free. Memory loss was also assessed among participants who survived a stroke — considering their memory loss might be different before and after stroke.

The researchers used a standard word-recall list to measure memory loss. For participants whose memory loss became too severe to use the word lists, researchers interviewed spouses or other caregivers using a standardized assessment.

The average memory score each year dropped:

• 0.078 points in those who didn’t have a stroke while in the study;
• 0.137 points before stroke in those who later survived a stroke;
• 0.205 points before stroke in those who later died from stroke.

Researchers discovered the people who survived a stroke had worse average memory even before the stroke compared to similar individuals who never had a stroke during follow-up.

At the time of stroke, memory function dropped an average 0.321 points. This difference is about the same as the average memory decline associated with growing 4.1 years older among those who remained stroke-free.

Because of the large stroke-related declines, memory impairment was common among stroke survivors.

Researchers believe several factors may explain the presentation of increased memory loss before a fatal stroke.

“People who die after stroke may have worse underlying disease prior to stroke. This suggests early disease is accumulating and that something is happening to these people before they are diagnosed with clinical stroke.” said M. Maria Glymour, S.D., senior study author and an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.

“However, memory impairment is associated with increased mortality regardless of stroke. Memory impairment may therefore make patients more vulnerable to death in the wake of the stroke, for reasons that are unrelated to stroke severity. We’re not sure which is true and we can’t tell with these analyses, but we hope to examine this in the future.”

Studies are needed to determine whether the effects of stroke on memory differ for different groups of people; for example, these effects may vary depending on race, gender, geographic location and socioeconomic status.

“Even health conditions that are much more common at older ages may have roots earlier in life,” Glymour said. “Your entire life course influences your health in old age.”

Source: American Heart Association

Elderly woman photo by shutterstock.

The experts believe the findings suggest age-related delays in neural timing (the ability of the brain to decode and then recode audio stimuli) are not inevitable and can be avoided or offset with musical training.

The study is the first to provide biological evidence that lifelong musical experience has an impact on the aging process.

In the study, researchers in the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory discovered that older musicians had a distinct neural timing advantage. This was determined by measuring the automatic brain responses of younger and older musicians and non-musicians to speech sounds.

“The older musicians not only outperformed their older non-musician counterparts, they encoded the sound stimuli as quickly and accurately as the younger non-musicians,” said Northwestern neuroscientist and co-author Nina Kraus, Ph.D.

“This reinforces the idea that how we actively experience sound over the course of our lives has a profound effect on how our nervous system functions.”

The study is published online in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

“These are very interesting and important findings,” said Don Caspary, Ph.D., a nationally known researcher on age-related hearing loss. “They support the idea that the brain can be trained to overcome, in part, some age-related hearing loss.”

“The new Northwestern data, along with additional with recent animal data from Michael Merzenich and his colleagues at University of California, San Francisco, strongly suggest that intensive training even late in life could improve speech processing in older adults and, as a result, improve their ability to communicate in complex, noisy acoustic environments,” Caspary added.

Previous studies suggest that musical training offsets losses in memory, and difficulties hearing speech in noise — two common complaints of older adults.

However, Kraus warns that the current study’s findings do not prove that musician’s have a neural timing advantage in every neural response to sound. “Instead, this study showed that musical experience selectively affected the timing of sound elements that are important in distinguishing one consonant from another.”

Source: Northwestern University

Experts were surprised ag the finding as women generally have higher rates of dementia than men.

Mayo Clinic researchers, led by study author Dr. Rosebud Roberts, followed a group of 1,450 people from Olmsted County, Minn. Study participants were between the ages of 70 and 89 and free of dementia at enrollment. Individuals underwent memory testing every 15 months for an average of three years and were also interviewed about their memory by medical professionals.

By the end of the study period, 296 people had developed mild cognitive impairment.

“The risk of MCI in men and women combined was high in this age group of elderly persons. This is disturbing given that people are living longer, and MCI may have a large impact on health care costs if increased efforts at prevention are not used to reduce the risk,” said Roberts.

Researchers discovered the number of new cases of mild cognitive impairment per year was higher in men, at 72 per 1,000 people compared to 57 per 1,000 people in women and 64 per 1,000 people in men and women combined.

MCI with memory loss present was more common at 38 per 1,000 people than MCI where memory loss was not present, which affected 15 per 1,000 people. Those who had less education or were not married also had higher rates of MCI.

“Our study suggests that risk factors for mild cognitive impairment should be studied separately in men and women,” said Roberts.

But the study also found that cognitive impairment can be transitory: 12 percent of people who were newly diagnosed with MCI were later diagnosed with no MCI, or reverted back to what was considered “cognitively normal.”

Roberts said the majority of people with mild cognitive impairment continue to have MCI or progress to dementia, such as Alzheimer’s.

The study is published in the online issue of the medical journal Neurology.

Source: American Academy of Neurology

Elderly man thinking photo by shutterstock.

The University of Pittsburgh study compared the brain activity of adolescent and adult rats involved in a task in which they anticipated a reward.

The researchers found increased brain cell activity in an area of the brain called the dorsal striatum (DS) — a site commonly associated with habit formation, decision-making, and motivated learning.

However, when adult rats were exposed to the situation, this area of the adult rat brain did not become activated by an anticipated reward.

“The brain region traditionally associated with reward and motivation, called the nucleus accumbens, was activated similarly in adults and adolescents,” said Bita Moghaddam, Ph.D., a coauthor of the paper. “But the unique sensitivity of adolescent DS to reward anticipation indicates that, in this age group, reward can tap directly into a brain region that is critical for learning and habit formation.”

Rather than studying the difference or similarities between the behaviors of adolescents and adults, researchers studied brain actions to see if similar activities were present among the two groups.

The researchers’ predictions proved accurate. Even though the behavior was the same for both adult and adolescent rats, the researchers observed age-related neural response differences that were especially dramatic in the DS during reward anticipation.

This shows that not only is reward expectancy processed differently in an adolescent brain, but also it can affect brain regions directly responsible for decision-making and action selection.

“Adolescence is a time when the symptoms of most mental illnesses—such as schizophrenia and bipolar and eating disorders—are first manifested, so we believe that this is a critical period for preventing these illnesses,” Moghaddam said.

“A better understanding of how the adolescent brain processes reward and decision-making is critical for understanding the basis of these vulnerabilities and designing prevention strategies.”

Researchers state that future research will continue to compare adolescent and adult behavior, especially as it relates to stimulants—such as amphetamines—and their influence on brain activity.

Researchers published a paper on their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Source: University of Pittsburgh

Researchers initially designed the program to boost cognition in older adults. Now investigators believe the results show that a non-drug intervention in older adults can change a personality trait once thought to be fixed throughout the lifespan.

According to personality psychologists, openness is one of five major personality traits. Studies suggest that the other four traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and extraversion) are not directly tied to a person’s mental or cognitive abilities.

But openness, defined as being flexible and creative, embracing new ideas and taking on challenging intellectual or cultural pursuits — does appear to be correlated with cognitive abilities.

Researchers gave older adults a series of pattern-recognition and problem-solving tasks and puzzles that they could perform at home. Participants worked at their own pace and were given tasks of increasing challenge each week.

“We wanted participants to feel challenged but not overwhelmed,” said Elizabeth Stine-Morrow, Ph.D., who led the research.

“While we didn’t explicitly test this, we suspect that the training program – adapted in difficulty in sync with skill development – was important in leading to increased openness. Growing confidence in their reasoning abilities possibly enabled greater enjoyment of intellectually challenging and creative endeavors.”

Overall, researchers tested the cognitive abilities and personality traits of 183 older adults. The subjects were randomly assigned to either an experimental group who participated in a cognitive intervention or a control group who did not.

They were tested a few weeks before the intervention and afterwards. At the end of the program, those who had engaged in the training and practice sessions saw improvement in their pattern-recognition and problem-solving skills, while those in the control group did not.

And those who improved in these inductive reasoning skills also demonstrated a moderate but significant increase in openness.

This study challenges the assumption that personality doesn’t change once one reaches adulthood, said Illinois psychology professor and study co-author Brent Roberts, Ph.D.

“There are certain models that say, functionally, personality doesn’t change after age 20 or age 30. You reach adulthood and pretty much you are who you are,” he said.

“There’s some truth to that at some level. But here you have a study that has successfully changed personality traits in a set of individuals who are (on average) 75. And that opens up a whole bunch of wonderful issues to think about.”

The findings are published in the journal Psychology and Aging.

Source: University of Illinois

MCI is the stage between normal aging and dementia. It is typically the point when others begin to notice that an individual is developing mild memory or thinking problems. MCI is often a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease.

The research is published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Researchers studied 74 non-smokers with MCI and an average age of 76. Half of the patients were given a nicotine patch of 15 mg a day for six months and half received a placebo.

The study used a double-blind format in which the participants and the investigators were unaware of the group that received the nicotine patch.

Paul Newhouse, M.D., professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Cognitive Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who authored the study, said the results of the study should not be viewed as an endorsement of smoking or of nicotine for normal individuals.

“What we and others have shown is that nicotine doesn’t do much for memory and attention in the normal population, but it does do something for those whose cognitive function is already impaired,” he said.

“People with memory loss should not start smoking or using nicotine patches by themselves because there are harmful effects of smoking and a medication such as nicotine should only be used with a doctor’s supervision,” Newhouse said.

“But this study provides strong justification for further research into the use of nicotine for people with early signs of memory loss which may help us determine whether benefits persist over long periods of time and provide meaningful improvement.”

Newhouse said nicotine is a “fascinating drug with interesting properties.” The effects of nicotine are dependent on the initial state of a person’s cognitive functioning, he said.

“If you’re already functioning fine, but slip down the hill, nicotine will push you back up toward the top. A little bit of the drug makes poor performers better. Too much, and it makes them worse again, so there’s a range. The key issue is to find the sweet spot where it helps.”

Researchers discovered meaningful changes with improvements across multiple cognitive tests for attention, memory, speed of processing and consistency of processing.

For example, after six months of treatment, the nicotine-treated group regained 46 percent of normal performance for age on long-term memory, whereas the placebo group worsened by 26 percent over the same time period.

However, while testing revealed cognitive improvements, health care providers were unable to observe a change in in the person (that is, their global impression of an individual did not change).

Newhouse said that future study is needed. “We need to do a much longer and larger study, to see if we can make a significant impact on the process of change.”

Experts say that nicotine stimulates receptors in the brain that are important for thinking and memory and may have neuroprotective effects. People with Alzheimer’s disease lose some of those receptors.

Newhouse said the future of nicotinic treatment is to try to identify earlier stages at which treatment can be applied, to see if it changes the trajectory of those who already have evidence of memory loss.

“I don’t think it’s going to become a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease by itself. That would be like trying to rebuild a house after a fire when the fire’s still going. You need to prevent the fire. The holy grail would be changing the deterioration curve.”

Side effects of the intervention were minimal as those in the study group receiving the nicotine patch experienced only minor side effects like nausea and dizziness, similar to what a person would experience when smoking a cigarette for the first time, Newhouse said.

Those on the nicotine patch also experienced mild weight loss, not surprising since nicotine is an appetite suppressant. There were also no withdrawal symptoms reported when the study participants stopped using the nicotine patch.

Source: Vanderbilt

Nicotine patch photo by shutterstock.

Experts say knowing when cognitive decline begins is important as pharmacological and behavioral intervention is more effective when initiated early in the course of care.

Moreover, in the context of increased life expectancies and aging populations around the world, there may well be a significant rise in the number of elderly people with various degrees of cognitive decline.

Abundant evidence has clearly established an inverse association between age and cognitive performance, but the age at which cognitive decline begins has been debated.

Recent clinical studies have demonstrated a correlation between the presence of amyloid plaques in the brain and the severity of cognitive decline. Further, new research methods and technology have helped detect amyloid plaques in the brains of young adults.

In the current study, researchers assessed the effect of age on cognitive decline over a multi-year period. This longitudinal study design is unique and a method researchers believe improves validity and generalizability of the findings.

Over a 10-year period, medical data from the Whitehall II cohort study was analyzed. The study is an ongoing assessment of 5,198 men and 2,192 women, aged between 45 and 70.

The cognitive function of the participants was evaluated three times over this time. Individual tests were used to assess memory, vocabulary, reasoning and verbal fluency.

The results show that cognitive performance (apart from the vocabulary tests) declines with age and more rapidly so as the individual’s age increases. The decline is significant in each age group.

For example, during the period studied, reasoning scores decreased by 3.6 percent for men aged between 45 and 49, and 9.6 percent for those aged between 65 and 70. The corresponding figures for women stood at 3.6 percent and 7.4 percent respectively.

The authors believe the discovery that cognition declines before the age of 60 has significant consequences.

“Determining the age at which cognitive decline begins is important since behavioral or pharmacological interventions designed to change cognitive aging trajectories are likely to be more effective if they are applied from the onset of decline,” said Archana Singh-Manoux, Ph.D., of the Centre for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health.

“As life expectancy continues to increase, understanding the correlation between cognitive decline and age is one of the challenges of the 21st Century” she said.

The study is published in the British Medical Journal.

Source: INSERM (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale)