News by Subject Social & Behavior

The new cutoff values for a metric widely used by geriatricians, physical therapists and nutritionists are more accurate, facilitate early diagnosis and contribute to preventive treatment.

New UCLA research suggests that elderly patients of female physicians are more likely than those of male physicians in the same outpatient practice to be vaccinated against the flu. This trend holds for all racial and ethnic groups studied and could provide insight into improving vaccination rates for influenza, COVID-19 and other illnesses.

Engaging in household chores may be beneficial for brain health in older adults. In a recent Baycrest study, older adults who spent more time on household chores showed greater brain size, which is a strong predictor of cognitive health.

Despite guidelines recommending de-escalation of treatment among older women with early breast cancer, many continue to be over treated.

The national Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study was designed to determine whether lowering elevated eye pressure in patients might prevent vision loss from glaucoma. Researchers recently completed follow-up studies on patients 20 years after the start of the original study and found that not all patients with elevated eye pressure need pressure-lowering treatment to prevent vision loss from glaucoma.

Young adults must step up their exercise routines to reduce their chances of developing high blood pressure or hypertension - a condition that may lead to heart attack and stroke, as well as dementia in later life.

Despite all the advances in medicine, some basic questions remain. For example, people cannot be told with any certainty how long they'll live. Nor can it be predicted exactly when a woman's childbearing years will end. However, a new study offers insights into factors that might predict a woman's age at natural menopause. Study results are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS).

ABCC1 has been shown in laboratory models to remove a plaque-forming protein known as amyloid beta from specialized endothelial cells that surround and protect the brain and cerebral spinal cord. Building on previous studies, TGen conducted a series of pre-clinical genomic laboratory experiments. Results suggest that ABCC1 not only could export Abeta out of the brain, but that increasing the expression of ABCC1 could reduce Abeta production, thus preventing, or delaying, the onset of Alzheimer's.