Walk to End Alzheimer's

Join the Alzheimer's Association Walk to End Alzheimer's™ and unite in a movement to reclaim the future for millions. Since 1989, the Alzheimer's Association mobilized millions of Americans in the Alzheimer's Association Memory Walk®; now, they ask you to register for Walk to End Alzheimer's, the nation's largest event to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer care, support and research. Together, we can end Alzheimer's disease the nation's sixth-leading cause of death.

Find a walk and sign up as a team or individual.

FDA Puts Early Alzheimer's Test on Hold

By Peggy Peck, Executive Editor, MedPage Today

The FDA will not approve the novel contrast agent, florbetapir -- widely touted as a breakthrough for early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease -- until manufacturer Eli Lilly puts a training program in place, the company announced.
More

Alzheimer's Association 2010 Year In Review

Report Calls for Action to Stem Alzheimer’s Deluge | StarTribune.com

By WARREN WOLFE, Star Tribune

The number of Minnesotans with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia will swell from 88,000 now to 198,000 in the next 30 years, with the prospect that state coffers, families and employers could be overwhelmed by the stress and costs of care, according to a report that will be delivered to the Legislature on Thursday. Without action, the report concludes, "the burden will be heaviest on public funding as the number of individuals with Alzheimer's increase and their family caregivers are stretched beyond their capacity and exhaust their resources."

Full Article

AoA January E-Newsletter

Table of Contents

AoA News

• 2011 Older Americans Month Theme

• Kathleen Otte Appointed As Regional Administrator of Regions I, II, & III

• AoA to Launch Affordable Care Act Webinar Series

• AoA Launches New Affordable Care Act Newsletter

• AoA’s January Statistics Widget and New Health E-Cards

Other HHS News

• New Legislation Establishes National Alzheimer’s Project within HHS

More News

• Reminder: ASA Accepting Applications for Leadership Program

• Next ASA Web Seminar to Focus on In-Home Care

• Upcoming NCEA-NAPSA Webcast

• New Report Spotlights Elders Living in Poverty

• PBS to Air Documentary Over 90 and Loving It

• AARP Survey Shows Boomers Are Largely Satisfied with Their Lives

• Treasury to Phase Out Paper Checks by 2013

• First Time Recipients of Federal Benefits to Receive Payments Electronically

CurrentNewsLetter.pdf (application/pdf Object)

A “Blinding Flash of the Obvious” « ChangingAging.org

by Dr Al Power in Changing Aging

Here’s a “Blinding Flash of the Obvious,” or “BFO”, as our friend Jane Verity, CEO of Dementia Care Australia would say. On New Year’s Day, the New York Times slipped in an article on new approaches to dementia. My inbox lit up with forwarded copies, and many of us celebrated the recognition of something many of us have been preaching for some time.

The article has its share of language issues, such as referring to people as “difficult” or “acting out”, but it hits on several central tenets of what I have come to call an “experiential” approach to dementia. Here are a few of those ideas alluded to in the article:

• The key to addressing emotional distress is to know the person, to understand his needs as he sees them, and to work creatively to find solutions that fulfill these needs, without judgment. This often requires that we take away our paternalistic view of people with dementia as being incapable, or somewhat less entitled to choices that we all take for granted. People choosing when they get up or go to bed? “Allowing” a 96-year old to eat chocolate?? How did we get to the point where these are startling revelations??? BFO.
• There are many cosmetic and programmatic changes recommended in the article and they all have value. But the gem of the article, in my mind, is the University of Iowa study that showed how durable people’s memories are of positive or negative emotional experiences–even more so than people without dementia–and long after their memory of the details of the experience have faded.

This is important for two reasons. First it shows, as Christine Bryden said in her book Dancing with Dementia, that people who live with dementia make a journey from cognition into emotion (and eventually into spirituality). The emotional content of the moment has extremely powerful effects on a person’s demeanor from moment to moment, day to day.

This leads to the second point: in spite of the value of cosmetic changes, focused activities and programmatic approaches, the real key to well-being lies in the spaces–those individual moments that underlie every interpersonal interaction–not just during bingo, but when greeting someone, giving her a bath or helping with a meal. These interactions leave an indelible impression on a person that will determine how their days (and yours) will play out. As my mother-in-law said to my wife one day, deep into her life with Alzheimer’s, “I don’t know your name, but I know you’re my friend.” One of the best references on these moments is Nancy Pearce’s book, Inside Alzheimer’s which is coming out in a revised edition this year.

Full Article

Drugging Dementia Patients Serious Problem, Panel Says

By Joyce Frieden, News Editor, MedPage Today

As baby boomers age, the nation faces a crisis in care for an ever-expanding population of dementia patients and over-medication will be a big problem, panelists said at a Senate Aging Committee forum on Wednesday.


There are currently about five million patients with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, and 11 million family members are caring for these patients, Patricia Grady, PhD, director of the National Institute of Nursing Research, said at the forum.

"We're facing the increasing age of the population," Grady said. "The urgency and the tempo is really increasing. Those in this field have a feeling we're headed in a very fast train toward the end of a cliff."

Over-medication occurs often with dementia patients, according to the panelists, who noted that patients' way of complaining about physical illness is often mistaken by caregivers and family members as aggressiveness or unruly behavior.

Full Article

AoA November Newsletter

Table of Contents

Top Story

November Is National Family Caregivers Month

AoA News

AoA’s National Family Caregiver Support Program Celebrates 10 Years

November is National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month

Message from Assistant Secretary Kathy Greenlee on Veterans Day 2010

AoA Recognizes Native American Heritage Month

Population Data on Older American Indian Adults Featured in AoA’s November
Widget

Eldercare Locator Takes on a New Look for a Rapidly Aging Population

2010-2011 Influenza Campaign

Other HHS News

Medicare Open Enrollment

AHRQ Launches New Website for Men

Hospitalizations for Medication and Illicit Drug-related Conditions on the Rise
among Americans Ages 45 and Older

More News

Scholarship Opportunity for Graduate Students

NCOA to Sponsor Webinar on Vision and Aging

Additional National Observances in November

Speakers of More Than One Language May See Delayed Onset of Dementia Symptoms - WSJ.com

A lifetime of speaking two or more languages appears to pay off in old age, with recent research showing the symptoms of dementia can be delayed by an average of four years in bilingual people.

Multilingualism doesn't delay the onset of dementia—the brains of people who speak multiple languages still show physical signs of deterioration—but the process of speaking two or more languages appears to enable people to develop skills to better cope with the early symptoms of memory-robbing diseases, including Alzheimer's.
Full Article

The Looming Challenge of Dementia in Corrections

by John Wilson, PhD, and Sharen Barboza, PhD in CorrectCare journal

As the inmate population ages, dementia will become increasingly common in our jails and prisons. In the community, the rate of new cases of dementia is expected to double in the next four decades. Although we don’t really know what the prevalence of dementia is among inmates, there is no reason to think it is less than in the community.

In fact, there is reason to think it may be two to three times more frequent in corrections than in the community: Inmates have fewer protective factors and more risk factors; increasing numbers are being incarcerated into late age or for life; and inmates may grow physiologically older faster than people in the community due to high risk lifestyles and poor health care prior to incarceration. Base rates for serious mental disorders are two to four times greater in corrections than in the community. Dementia is unlikely to be an exception.

Continue Reading

NIH Panel Provides No New Clues for Unraveling Alzheimer's Disease from MedPage Today

Image via Wikipedia

By Emily P. Walker, Washington Correspondent, MedPage Today

More than a century after German psychiatrist and neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer identified the cognitively devastating disease that affects as many as 5.3 million people in the U.S. alone, an expert panel has issued a decidedly bleak report on the state of the science of Alzheimer's disease.

The independent panel -- brought together by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) this week -- determined that the causes of Alzheimer's disease are still unknown and that no reliable evidence has shown that anything can prevent the disease or stop it from progressing.
Continue Reding

New Advice on Getting Dementia Patients off the Road - in Meeting Coverage from MedPage Today

By John Gever, Senior Editor, MedPage Today

A dementia rating test and assessments by caregivers can be very useful in identifying people with dementia who need to quit driving, researchers said here.

Patients' own confidence in their driving ability and their fearlessness behind the wheel? Not so useful.

Those were the main messages in new practice guidelines issued by the American Academy of Neurology at its annual meeting in Toronto.

Continue Reading

Related articles by Zemanta

• Some people can drive with mild dementia: guidelines (ctv.ca)
• New Guidelines For Drivers With Dementia (abcnews.go.com)
• Many Alzheimer patients safe to drive (healthzone.ca)
• Caregivers key in assessing drivers with dementia (cbc.ca)
• Diets may determine dementia risk (news.bbc.co.uk)

Afib Linked to Dementia Incidence and Mortality

By Crystal Phend, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Atrial fibrillation appears independently linked to all forms of dementia, particularly in later middle age, researchers found.

Atrial fibrillation patients 70 or younger were 2.3 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than those without the heart rhythm disorder, after multivariate adjustment (P=0.001), in a large prospective cohort study by T. Jared Bunch, MD, of Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah, and colleagues.
Coninue Reading

Medical News: PET Scan Measures Brain Plaque Reductions in Alzheimer's - in Neurology, Alzheimer's Disease from MedPage Today

By Chris Emery, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today

A new PET scan neuroimaging technique measured drug-related reductions in the size of brain plaques thought to be responsible for the progression of Alzheimer's disease, a new study found.

The technique, known as ¹¹C-PiB PET, showed that the drug bapineuzumab reduced the amyloid-β deposits in the brains of patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease by about 25% compared with placebo (mean difference in ¹¹C-PiB retention ratio change from baseline =–0.24; 95% CI –0.39 to –0.09; P=0.003).

The results were reported online in the March 1 issue of The Lancet Neurology. The study did not evaluate whether reduction in plaque size resulted in clinical improvement in patients' condition.
Continue Reading

Related articles by Zemanta

• Neuroimaging Technique Supports Reduction in Amyloid-Beta in Brains of Patients Suffering from Alzheimer's Disease Treated with Bapineuzumab (eon.businesswire.com)
• Scans Might Monitor Success of Alzheimer's Drugs (nlm.nih.gov)
• Promising new neuroimaging techniques for early detection of Alzheimer's disease (scienceblog.com)

Overweight Middle-Aged Adults At Greater Risk For Cognitive Decline In Later Life

Image via Wikipedia

from Medical News Today

The adverse affects of being overweight are not limited to physical function but also extend to neurological function, according to research in the latest issue of The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological and Medical Sciences (Volume 65A, Number 1).

The publication presents a collection of ten articles highlighting new findings related to obesity in older persons.

Continue Reading

Related articles by Zemanta

• Overweight middle-aged adults at greater risk for cognitive decline in later life (scienceblog.com)

Rising Tide: The Impact of Dementia in Canada

from Executive Summary:

Rising Tide: the Impact of Dementia on Canadian Society is the final report of an Alzheimer Society project funded by Pfizer Canada, Health Canada, Public Health Agency of Canada, Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Rx&D. The purpose of the report was to:

* Estimate the health and economic burden of dementia in Canada over the next 30 years;
* Analyze the possible effects of intervention scenarios upon this burden;
* Demonstrate how the proposed interventions could affect the health and economic impacts of dementia in Canada;
* Review policy options;
* Make recommendations on how to address the issue.

The Findings of Rising Tide
Continue Reading

Read/Download full Report

Claims That Diabetes Triples Risk Of Dementia In Some Older People

A new study claims that some older people with mild memory-loss are three times more likely to develop dementia if they also have diabetes.

The research, by Alzheimer's Research Trust scientists at King's College London, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, investigated the connection between mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in older people and dementia.

Continue Reading

Postscript: The Astor Trial - The New Old Age Blog - NYTimes.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

A judge has sentenced Anthony D. Marshall, only child of the late philanthropist and socialite Brooke Astor, to one to three years in prison for looting his mother’s fortune as she slipped into the confusion of Alzheimer’s disease.

“What would she say if she were here?” Justice A. Kirke Bartley Jr. demanded in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Mrs. Astor died at age 105 in 2007. “Would she blanch at the spectacle?”

Continue Reading

Related articles by Zemanta

• Brooke Astor's son enlists celebrities to help him avoid jail (telegraph.co.uk)
• You: Brooke Astor's son jailed for looting estate (guardian.co.uk)
• Brooke Astor's son sentenced to prison (telegraph.co.uk)

Survey: 1 in 3 U.S. Adults Is a Caregiver - CBS News

65 Million Care for Elderly, Sick, or Special Needs Relative, Apart from Ordinary Parenting; Many Have Full-Time Jobs

(WebMD) About one in three adults in the United States cares for a loved one who is elderly, sick, or has special needs. And two out of three unpaid caregivers are women, a new report finds.

More often than not, caregivers are raising families and working outside the home in addition to caring for aging parents, chronically ill spouses, or children or grandchildren with special needs.

The report, commissioned by the National Alliance for Caregiving in collaboration with the AARP and the insurance group MetLife, resulted from interviews with nearly 1,500 caregivers chosen at random. Similar interviews were conducted in 2004 and 1997.
Continue Reading

Related articles by Zemanta

• Getting Paid to Take Care of Mom or Dad (blogs.wsj.com)

US Administration on Aging Awards more than $32 million for Home and Community-Based Services and Supports for Older Americans and Individuals with Disabilities

HHS Assistant Secretary for Aging Kathy Greenlee has announced more than $32 million to expand and support community-based programs that help promote health, independence and community living for older Americans, veterans and people with disabilities.

“This new funding complements President Obama’s designation of 2009 as the ‘Year of Community Living,’ which supports community living options for all people with disabilities,” said U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “These grants are important investments that will help us strengthen services in the community so that more older Americans and individuals with disabilities can remain in their homes and communities.”

Today’s announcement includes funding for:

Community Living Program (CLP)/Veterans Directed Home and Community Based Program (VDHCBS)
Seven million dollars for AoA’s Community Living Program to fund 16 states to help individuals who are at risk of being admitted to a nursing home to remain at home through the provision of home and community-based services and supports. For the second year, AoA will be partnering with the VHA to offer the VDHCBS program through the Community Living Program.

To learn which states received CLP funding, Click here.

Aging and Disability Resource Centers (ADRC)
Eleven million dollars to 49 states and territories to make it easier for people to learn about and access the full array of long-term care options that are available in their communities. ADRCs are a collaborative effort of AoA and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to support state efforts to implement “one-stop shop” entry points at the community level.

To learn which states received funding and to learn more about ADRCs,Click here.

Alzheimer’s Disease Supportive Services Program (ADSSP)
Ten million dollars for grants to help families caring for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and Related Disorders (ADRD) in the community. Through the ADSSP, 16 states will receive grants to expand the availability of support services for families who are caring for individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease in the community.

To learn which states were selected and to learn more about the Alzheimer’s Disease Supportive Services program, click here

Community Innovations for Aging in Place
More than $4.5 million for grants to 13 community-based organizations to support a variety of innovative models for providing comprehensive and coordinated health and social services to seniors in the communities where they live.

To learn which organizations were selected for Community Innovations for Aging in Place, click here.