Nursing Assistant Resources On The Web

Some recent articles about Alzheimer’s Disease.

Alzheimer’s progresses quicker in highly educated: study
Alzheimer’s disease, a leading cause of dementia in the elderly, appears later in highly educated people — but once it does, it advances more quickly, scientists said on Thursday.

“We find that after the onset of manifestations of Alzheimer’s disease patients with higher education decline faster,” Dr Nikolaos Scarmeas, of Columbia University Medical Center in New York, said in an interview.

He and his team followed the progression of the illness in 312 people who ranged from being illiterate to highly educated. The patients were given brain function tests and monitored for five years.

Cognitive decline occurred in all the patients. But the researchers noted that each additional year of education was related to an additional 0.3 percent deterioration, particularly in memory and speed of thought processes.

The researchers looked at other factors, such as changes in the brain, high blood pressure, depression and age, that could have an impact on the disease.

“We couldn’t find any other explanation for it,” said Scarmeas, who reported the finding in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

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Testosterone ups quality of life in men with AD
A testosterone patch can improve the quality of life for men with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but it seems to have little effect on cognition, according to the results of a study.

Previous reports have suggested that testosterone levels are lower in men with Alzheimer’s than in their counterparts without the neurologic disorder. Testosterone use has been shown to improve cognition in older men without Alzheimer’s disease and, in animal models, treatment with the male hormone has been linked to reduced formation of beta-amyloid, the protein that forms the plaques that clog the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.

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