key to early Alzheimer’s diagnosis
According to an Indian-origin scientists, errors on memory and thinking tests may signal Alzheimer’s up to 18 years before the disease can be diagnosed. “The changes in thinking and memory that precede obvious symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease begin decades before,” said study author Kumar B Rajan with Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
“While we cannot detect such changes in individuals at risk, we were able to observe them among a group of individuals who eventually developed dementia due to Alzheimer’s,” Kumar said. For the study, 2,125 European-American and African-American people from Chicago with an average age of 73 without Alzheimer’s disease were given tests of memory and thinking skills every three years for 18 years. Twenty-three per cent of African-Americans and 17 per cent of European-Americans got Alzheimer’s during the study. Those who scored lower overall on the memory and thinking tests had an increased risk of developing the disease.
Real Reason you’re Not losing Weight
You probably know that weight gain ups your risk of diseases like diabetes. But you might not realise how complicated that link really is, says Osama Hamdy, MD, medical director of the obesity clinical programme at Joslin diabetes center in Boston and author of The Diabetes Breakthrough. “The cycle starts when you gain weight,” Dr Hamdy says. The kicker is that once you have blood sugar problems, it’s much harder to do the one thing that can help: Slim down. That may be why majority of people with type 2 diabetes are overweight. The good news is dropping pounds is not impossible if you understand the complex dance between blood sugar, belly fat and insulin, and how to interrupt it.
drug combo slows deadly leukemia
A new combination therapy for a rare, deadly leukemia can send the disease into remission even in patients whose standard therapy has failed, researchers have found in a pilot study. The new approach to battling T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia combines immunotherapy — boosting the body’s immune system — with epigenetics, the manipulation of gene activity. “It was unbelievable seeing a patient who had already failed Campath (the drug typically used to treat the disease) literally going back into remission,” said one of the leaders of the study Thomas loughran Jr, director of the University of Virginia Cancer Center in the US. The experimental approach did not cure the patients, but it did send them all into remission, thus buying them more time to have the bone marrow/stem cell transplant.