Data from 196,383 older adults (60+; mean age 64) in the UK Biobank found that a healthy lifestyle was associated with lower dementia risk regardless of genes.
Both an unhealthy lifestyle and high genetic risk were associated with higher dementia risk.
A rat study comparing different forms of exercise has found that running was much more effective than HIIT or resistence training in generating new brain cells.
Most exercise studies involving rats have used running wheels, and the benefits of these for the creation of new neurons in the hippocampus (adult neurogenesis) have been well-demonstrated. This study used two other (rather ingenuous) strategies to mimic high-intensity interval training and weights training.
A study involving 614 patients with type 2 diabetes (mean age 62) has found that longer duration of diabetes was associated with more brain volume loss, particularly in the gray matter. Roughly, for every 10 years of diabetes, the brain was similar to that of a non-diabetic person who was two years older.
However, the study did not confirm any association of diabetes characteristics with small vessel ischemic disease.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/rson-dda042214.php
A four-year study involving 1,502 healthy older adults (50+) has found that the frequency of negative interactions with family members (not partners or children) and friends was associated with an increased risk of developing hypertension in women (but not in men). Each increase in the total average negative social interaction score was associated with a 38% increased chance of developing hypertension. Younger older women (51-64) were more affected than those 65 or older.
Analysis of 1,821 Alzheimer’s brains has found that 11% of them actually suffered from a variant called hippocampal sparing Alzheimer’s. This subtype has been neither well recognized nor treated appropriately, but is now revealed to be relatively common.
A study involving 254 people with dementia living at home has found that 99% of people with dementia and 97% of their caregivers had one or more unmet needs, 90% of which were safety-related. More than half of the patients had inadequate meaningful daily activities at a senior center or at home, one-third still needed a dementia evaluation or diagnosis, and more than 60% needed medical care for conditions related or unrelated to their dementia.
Data from 1,425 cognitively healthy older adults (70-89) has found that a diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was associated with an 83% greater risk of developing non-amnestic mild cognitive impairment. The greatest risk was among patients who had COPD for more than five years.
Over the study period, 230 (16%) developed amnestic MCI, 97 (7%) nonamnestic MCI, 27 (2%) MCI of unknown type, and 16 dementia (1%).
This sounds like pseudoscience, but it appears in Journal of Neuroscience, so … Weirdly, a rat study has found that sleeping on the side (the most common posture for humans and other animals) is the best position for efficiently removing waste from the brain.
Brain waste includes amyloid-beta and tau proteins, whose build-up is a critical factor in the development of Alzheimer's disease.
A study involving 14 years of health records from more than 274,000 Northern Californians has assessed the relative dementia risk of six different ethnicities.
The average annual rate of dementia was:
A study involving 18 volunteers who performed a simple orientation discrimination while on a stationary bicycle, has found that low-intensity exercise boosted activation in the visual cortex, compared with activation levels when at rest or during high-intensity exercise.