AC/DC founder Malcolm Young dead at 64

Malcolm Young, who founded the Australian rock band AC/DC along with his brother Angus, has died at age 64 after suffering from dementia for several years, the band said on its Facebook page on Saturday.

Malcolm Young was a songwriter, backing vocalist and rhythm guitarist for AC/DC, a hard rock and heavy metal band that was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2003. Their hits included “Highway to Hell” from 1979 and “Back in Black” and “You Shook Me All Night Long” from 1980.

“Malcolm, along with Angus, was the founder and creator of AC/DC. With enormous dedication and commitment he was the driving force behind the band,” the band posted on Facebook without saying where he died.

Malcolm is survived by his wife O‘Linda, children Cara and Ross, three grandchildren, a sister and a brother, the band said. He “passed away peacefully with his family by his bedside,” the band said.

George Young, another brother to Malcolm and Angus, died on Oct. 23 at age 70. George Young had served as producer to AC/DC and guitarist for the band Easybeats.

source: interaksyon.com

Dementia cases to nearly triple by 2050 - report

PARIS, France - The number of people with dementia worldwide will nearly triple from 47 million today to 132 million in 2050, a report said Tuesday.

Dementia is an umbrella term for degenerative diseases of the brain characterised by a gradual decline in the ability to think and remember.

Accounting for well over half of cases, Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia.

As the world gets older, the number of people with dementia is set to increase exponentially, notes the World Alzheimer Report 2015, produced by Alzheimer's Disease International.

Today there are 900 million people 60 or older. Over the next 35 years, that age group will grow by 65 percent in rich countries, 185 percent in lower-middle income nations, and 239 percent in poor countries.

In 2015 alone, there will be about 10 million new cases, one every few seconds and nearly 30 percent more than in 2010.

The risk increases dramatically as we age.

Fewer than four out of every 1,000 people aged 60 to 64 are afflicted with some form of what used to be called senility. But from the age of 90, that ratio jumps to 105 for every 1,000 people, more than 10 percent.

The global cost burden of dementia is likewise increasing sharply, having risen by more than 35 percent over the last five years to $818 billion (709 billion euros) in 2015.

Sixty percent of the cost was for medical and institutional care.

"Population ageing alone drives the projected increases," said the report.

source: interaksyon.com

Poetry breaks through fog of Alzheimer's sufferers

STRATFORD-UPON-AVON - The teenager's voice breaks the silence that hangs over the dozing, grey-haired figures. "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you," she recites -- "you'll be a man, my son," finishes one of the pensioners, with a burst of recognition.

Alzheimer's has stolen most of Margaret's memories, but she can still remember the line from Rudyard Kipling's famous poem that she learnt years ago, a rare moment of clarity in the fog of the cruel disease.

This retirement home in central England is one of many institutions and hospitals across the country turning to poetry to provide some respite from the symptoms of dementia, such as the loss of memory, communication and basic skills.

While it provides no cure, the rhythm and pace of well-known verse can act as a trigger for memories and speech, according to Jill Fraser, whose charity "Kissing it Better" organizes reading sessions for the elderly.

If patients "hear one word that they can remember from poetry, it brightens their day up," adds Elaine Gibbs, who runs the Hylands House retirement home in Stratford-upon-Avon -- fittingly, the home of William Shakespeare.

Miriam Cowley, elegant in a flowered dress and her grey hair tied up into a bun, listens attentively as a teenager reads her "Daffodils" by William Wordsworth.

"I did know the poem but I've forgotten it. I learnt it when I was a kid at school, a long time ago," said the retired teacher, who suffers from short-term memory loss.

"It brings back good memories. I will have some good dreams after that, dreams of daffodils, of trees."

'The poetry broke open the dam'

The home can be a sombre place because of the prevalence of residents with Alzheimer's, dubbed "the long good-bye" because of the way it slowly steals away everything that makes a person who they are.

But as a woman bashes a plate incessantly against a table at one end of the room, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings, one of the teenage volunteer readers says spending time there "gives you a real buzz."

"You come in here and everyone is sitting there by themselves," says Hannah Ciotkowski, 15. Then when someone starts reading a poem aloud "you can immediately see life in them, they are smiling."

"It's wonderful when suddenly they join in with a line," adds Anita Wright, an 81-year-old former actress with the Royal Shakespeare Company who also reads poetry at Hylands.

She recalls how one patient with advanced dementia broke down in tears when she heard a poem about a man bidding farewell to his lover, and started recounting how her fiance had died.

"She had not said a single word since she had been to this home and the poem just broke open the dam," Wright said.

Lyn Darnley, head of voice at the RSC, says poetry can be very powerful.

"These rhythms run deeply inside of us and poetry can touch and spark memories of not just emotions but the deep senses of language," she told AFP.

Experts caution that poetry will not halt the onslaught of dementia, which affects 800,000 people in Britain.

"Poetry does not cure dementia," says Dave Bell, a specialist nurse with Dementia UK, a charity which works to improve the quality of life for people affected by the disease.

"But there is a sense of achievement and self-esteem for the person because they can remember something," he says, adding that it also helps them connect with other people.

Fifteen-year-old Hannah is certainly convinced: "I hope that when I am old, people will come visit me, read to me, and sing to me."

source: interaksyon.com

Good night's sleep cleans out gunk in brain

LOS ANGELES — When we sleep, our brains get rid of gunk that builds up while we're awake, suggests a study that may provide new clues to treat Alzheimer's disease and other disorders.

This cleaning was detected in the brains of sleeping mice, but scientists said there's reason to think it happens in people too.

If so, the finding may mean that for people with dementia and other mind disorders, "sleep would perhaps be even more important in slowing the progression of further damage," Dr. Clete Kushida, medical director of the Stanford Sleep Medicine Center, said in an email.

Kushida did not participate in the study, which appears in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

People who don't get enough shut-eye have trouble learning and making decisions, and are slower to react. But despite decades of research, scientists can't agree on the basic purpose of sleep. Reasons range from processing memory, saving energy to regulating the body.

The latest work, led by scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center, adds fresh evidence to a long-standing view: When we close our eyes, our brains go on a cleaning spree.


The team previously found a plumbing network in mouse brains that flushes out cellular waste. For the new study, the scientists injected the brains of mice with beta-amyloid, a substance that builds up in Alzheimer's disease, and followed its movement. They determined that it was removed faster from the brains of sleeping mice than awake mice.

The team also noticed that brain cells tend to shrink during sleep, which widens the space between the cells. This allows waste to pass through that space more easily.

Though the work involved mouse brains, lead researcher Dr. Maiken Nedergaard said this plumbing system also exists in dogs and baboons, and it's logical to think that the human brain also clears away toxic substances. Nedergaard said the next step is to look for the process in human brains.

In an accompanying editorial, neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro said scientists have recently taken a heightened interest in the spaces between brain cells, where junk is flushed out.

It's becoming clearer that "sleep is likely to be a brain state in which several important housekeeping functions take place," she said in an email.

The study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. In a statement, program director Jim Koenig said the finding could lead to new approaches for treating a range of brain diseases.

source: philstar.com

Sleep helps brain stay fit by clearing waste

WASHINGTON - Like a janitor sweeping the halls after the lights go out, major changes occur in the brain during sleep to flush out waste and ward off disease, researchers said Thursday.

The research in the journal Science offers new answers to explain why people spend a third of their lives asleep and may help in treating dementia and other neurological disorders.

In lab experiments on mice, researchers observed how cellular waste was flushed out via the brain's blood vessels into the body's circulatory system and eventually the liver.


These waste products included amyloid beta, a protein that when accumulated is a driver of Alzheimer's disease.

In order to help remove the waste, cerebral spinal fluid is pumped through brain tissue.

The process is sped along during sleep because the brain's cells shrink by about 60 percent, allowing the fluid to move faster and more freely through the brain.

The whole operation takes place in what researchers call the glymphatic system, which appears to be nearly 10 times more active during sleep than while awake.

"The brain only has limited energy at its disposal," said lead author Maiken Nedergaard of the University of Rochester Medical Center.

"You can think of it like having a house party. You can either entertain the guests or clean up the house, but you can't really do both at the same time."

Co-authors of the study, which was funded by the US National Institutes of Health, came from Oregon Health and Science University and New York University.

source: interaksyon.com

Study ties higher blood sugar to dementia risk

Higher blood-sugar levels, even those well short of diabetes, seem to raise the risk of developing dementia, a major new study finds. Researchers say it suggests a novel way to try to prevent Alzheimer's disease — by keeping glucose at a healthy level.

Alzheimer's is by far the most common form of dementia and it's long been known that diabetes makes it more likely. The new study tracked blood sugar over time in all sorts of people — with and without diabetes — to see how it affects risk for the mind-robbing disease.

The results challenge current thinking by showing that it's not just the high glucose levels of diabetes that are a concern, said the study's leader, Dr. Paul Crane of the University of Washington in Seattle.

"It's a nice, clean pattern" — risk rises as blood sugar does, said Dallas Anderson, a scientist at the National Institute on Aging, the federal agency that paid for the study.

"This is part of a larger picture" and adds evidence that exercising and controlling blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol are a viable way to delay or prevent dementia, he said.

Because so many attempts to develop effective drugs have failed, "It looks like, at the moment, sort of our best bet," Anderson said. "We have to do something. If we just do nothing and wait around till there's some kind of cocktail of pills, we could be waiting a long time."




    About 35 million people worldwide have dementia; in the United States, about 5 million have Alzheimer's disease. What causes it isn't known. Current treatments just temporarily ease symptoms. People who have diabetes don't make enough insulin, or their bodies don't use insulin well, to turn food into energy. That causes sugar in the blood to rise, which can damage the kidneys and other organs — possibly the brain, researchers say.

The new study, published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, just tracked people and did not test whether lowering someone's blood sugar would help treat or prevent dementia. That would have to be tested in a new study, and people should not seek blood-sugar tests they wouldn't normally get otherwise, Crane said.

"We don't know from a study like this whether bringing down the glucose level will prevent or somehow modify dementia," but it's always a good idea to avoid developing diabetes, he said.

Eating well, exercising and controlling weight all help to keep blood sugar in line.

The study involved 2,067 people 65 and older in the Group Health Cooperative, a Seattle-area health care system. At the start, 232 participants had diabetes; the rest did not. They each had at least five blood-sugar tests within a few years of starting the study and more after it was underway. Researchers averaged these levels over time to even out spikes and dips from testing at various times of day or before or after a meal.

Participants were given standard tests for thinking skills every two years and asked about smoking, exercise and other things that affect dementia risk.

After nearly seven years of follow-up, 524, or one quarter of them, had developed dementia — mostly Alzheimer's disease. Among participants who started out without diabetes, those with higher glucose levels over the previous five years had an 18 percent greater risk of developing dementia than those with lower glucose levels.

Among participants with diabetes at the outset, those with higher blood sugar were 40 percent more likely to develop dementia than diabetics at the lower end of the glucose spectrum.

The effect of blood sugar on dementia risk was seen even when researchers took into account whether participants had the apoE4 gene, which raises the risk for Alzheimer's.

At least for diabetics, the results suggest that good blood-sugar control is important for cognition, Crane said.

For those without diabetes, "it may be that with the brain, every additional bit of blood sugar that you have is associated with higher risk," he said. "It changes how we think about thresholds, how we think about what is normal, what is abnormal."

source: philstar.com

Memory decline may be earliest sign of dementia

BOSTON — Memory problems that are often dismissed as a normal part of aging may not be so harmless after all.

Noticing you have had a decline beyond the occasional misplaced car keys or forgotten name could be the very earliest sign of Alzheimer's, several research teams are reporting.

Doctors often regard people who complain that their memory is slipping as "the worried well," but the new studies show they may well have reason to worry, said Maria Carrillo, a senior scientist at the Alzheimer's Association.

One study found that self-reported memory changes preceded broader mental decline by about six years. Another tied these changes to evidence on brain scans that dementia is setting in.

"Maybe these people know something about themselves" that their doctors don't, "and maybe we should pay attention to them," said Dorene Rentz, a Massachusetts General Hospital psychologist. She helped run one of the studies, which were discussed Wednesday at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Boston.

About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's disease is the most common type. It causes a slow decline in thinking and reasoning ability. Memory trouble that disrupts daily life is one symptom.



Don't panic, though: The researchers are not talking about "senior moments," those small, temporary lapses most everyone has, said Creighton Phelps, a neuroscientist with the U.S. National Institute on Aging. They are talking about real memory loss, in which the information doesn't come back to you later, not even when people remind you of what you forgot, he explained.

A true decline is a change in your normal pattern. "You're starting to forget things now that you normally didn't — doctor appointments, luncheon engagements, the kids are coming over ... things that a year or two ago you wouldn't," said Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of the Mayo Clinic's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center.

Pati Hoffman, of Carol Stream, Ill., near Chicago, used to design menus and organize events for restaurants but began forgetting where she filed things in her computer.

"I really just kind of started struggling. Something wasn't right. I would have to bring my work home, spread it all over the floor, sort it and then try to get it done so that nobody at work would know I was having this difficulty," she said. Driving to familiar places, "I would think, 'I know where I am, but I don't know how to get out of here.'"

Two neurologists said it was just stress and anxiety, and one prescribed an antidepressant. A third finally diagnosed her with early-onset Alzheimer's disease four years ago. She was 56.

The new studies were on "subjective cognitive decline" — when people first notice they are having trouble, even if they test normal on mental ability tests:

— Richard Kryscio at the University of Kentucky led a study of 531 people, average age 73. Those who reported a change in memory or thinking abilities since their last doctor visit were nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with dementia or mild cognitive impairment about six to nine years later.

— Researchers from the French government's health agency and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston studied 3,861 nurses at least 70 years old who were asked about memory symptoms and periodically tested for them later. About 900 of them carried a gene that raises their risk for dementia. Among the gene carriers, worry about a single memory symptom predicted verbal memory decline on tests over the next six years. In the others without the gene, worry about three or more memory symptoms was linked to memory decline on tests.

— Rebecca Amariglio and other Harvard researchers found that complaints about memory decline matched how much sticky plaque researchers saw on brain scans of 189 people 65 and older. This confirms an earlier study of 131 people that tied memory complaints to these brain plaques, the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.

— Reports of memory impairment were closely tied to a decline later in the ability to recall events in a study of 2,230 people, average age 80, by researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany.

— Petersen said that a study he and others soon will report shows that complaints about memory predicted who would later develop mild cognitive impairment — what used to be called "pre-Alzheimer's" — in a random sample of 1,500 people in the community near the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

"If you notice a change in your pattern of either yourself or a loved one, seek a health care professional's evaluation," said Heather Snyder, the Alzheimer's Association's director of medical and scientific operations. "It could be a lack of sleep or nutritional, but it may be something more than that."

But don't worry about small, common memory slips, said Dr. Reisa Sperling, director of the Alzheimer's center at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

"Every time you forget someone's name, you don't need to go running to the doctor," she said.

The Alzheimer's Association lists 10 warning signs of the disease:

— Memory changes that disrupt daily life.

— Challenges in planning or solving problems.

— Difficulty completing familiar tasks at home, at work or at leisure.

— Confusion with time or place.

— Trouble understanding visual images and spatial relationships.

— New problems with words in speaking or writing.

— Misplacing things and losing the ability to retrace steps.

— Decreased or poor judgment.

— Withdrawal from work or social activities.

— Changes in mood and personality.

source: philstar.com

Care centers deny elderly the right to sex - paper

PARIS - Care facilities often deny elderly people the basic right, and one of their few remaining pleasures, to continue having sex, according to a paper published on Tuesday.

Many older people, including those with early stage dementia, enjoy sex while they live at home, but this changes once they move into residential care, said the Australian authors of a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

They blame a lack of privacy, age discrimination, and fears about the legal implications should a patient be found mentally incompetent to give consent.

"The formation of relationships, physical intimacy, and the expression of sexuality are a basic human right and a normal and healthy part of ageing," wrote the authors from the Australian Centre for Evidence-Based Aged Care.

Yet most facilities do not have formal policy guidelines or staff training aimed at allowing residents to continue being sexually active.

"Privacy remains a problem, with residents often not able to lock their doors and most rooms equipped only with single beds," said the paper.

"For residents with dementia, sexuality is viewed with even greater anxiety, either being labelled 'inappropriate' or a 'challenging' behavior or as a risk to the resident."

The team acknowledged the difficulties in determining the legal threshold for informed consent in elderly patients with dementia, but argued this should not be an excuse for denying them their rights.

"It is important to remember that dementia is defined in stages, with early or mild dementia manifesting as mild forgetfulness or confusion that is often mistaken for a normal part of ageing," they wrote.

"Clearly there is a significant difference between the capabilities of a person with mild dementia and one with advanced or final-stage dementia and, therefore, a single approach to sexuality and 'people with dementia' is inappropriate."

source: interaksyon.com