Surgical Vs. Nonsurgical Treatment For Cervical Spine FractureFor older adults with "C2" fractures of the upper (cervical) spine, surgery and nonsurgical treatment provide similar short- and long-term outcomes, reports a study in the May issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health...
Older People With Chronic Leukemia May Benefit From Experimental AgentThe experimental drug ibrutinib (PCI-32765) shows great promise for the treatment of elderly patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), according to interim findings from a clinical trial. The phase I/II trial, co-led by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J...
Fatal Falls Increase For Older AdultsThe recent dramatic increase in the fall death rate in older Americans is likely the effect of improved reporting quality, according to a new report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy...
Dementia Sufferers More Likely To Die At Home Than In Nursing HomesA new study from the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University has found that, at time of death, individuals with dementia are more likely to be living at home than in a nursing home. This contradicts the commonly held view that most individuals with dementia in the United States eventually move to nursing homes and die there...
US Seniors Are Going HungryA new study that looked at the hunger trends over a 10-year period found that 14.85 percent of seniors in the United States, more than one in seven, face the threat of hunger. This translates into 8.3 million seniors...
Pressure Ulcer Risk May Be Increased By Gastric Feeding TubesA new study led by Brown University researchers reports that percutaneous endoscopic gastric (PEG) feeding tubes, long assumed to help bedridden dementia patients stave off or overcome pressure ulcers, may instead make the horrible sores more likely to develop or not improve. The analysis of thousands of nursing home patients with advanced dementia appears in the Archives of Internal Medicine...
Cancer In The Elderly: Research Fails To Keep Up With Demographic ChangeNew research showing that almost half of 13,000 patients with head and neck cancers had other health-related problems at the same time was one of the presentations in a special session at the 31st conference of the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO 31) [1]. The session highlighted the effect of the demographic time bomb caused by an increasingly ageing population...
Topical Aganirsen Found To Be Active In Retinal DiseaseGene Signal, a company focused on developing innovative drugs to manage angiogenesis based conditions, has announced that positive data from a study of aganirsen (GS-101, eye drops) in a nonhuman primate model of choroidal neovascularization has been presented at the 2012 ARVO Annual Meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida...
In Mouse Model, Delayed Female Sexual Maturity Linked To Longer LifespanAn intriguing clue to longevity lurks in the sexual maturation timetable of female mammals, Jackson Laboratory researchers and their collaborators report. Jackson researchers including Research Scientist Rong Yuan, Ph.D., had previously established that mouse strains with lower circulating levels of the hormone IGF1 at age six months live longer than other strains...
Muscle Wasting Caused By Aging And Heart Failure Can Be Slowed By ExerciseExercise can counteract muscle breakdown, increase strength and reduce inflammation caused by aging and heart failure, according to new research in Circulation, an American Heart Association journal. The benefits for heart failure patients are similar to those for anyone who exercises: there's less muscle-wasting, and their bodies become conditioned to handle more exercise...