More Than 50 Percent of People Over 90 With Alzheimer’s Use Psychotropic Drugs

Summary: According to a new study, hunger can suppress rival drive states such as fear, anxiety, thirst or social needs.

Source: University of Eastern Finland.

Psychotropic drug use is rather common among persons aged 90 years of more diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease compared with those who were diagnosed at younger age, concludes study conducted at University of Eastern Finland. Persons aged 90 years or more used antipsychotics 5 times and antidepressants 2.5 times more often than those without the disease in the same age group. The results were published in the Age and Ageing journal.

Care for caregivers: Report finds they are often ignored

About 12 years ago, Nancy Menchhofer’s husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at the age of 59. When she moved him to a care facility five years ago, it was the hardest thing she had ever done. Menchhofer visits him once a week and feeds him lunch. He doesn’t know who she is or why she’s there.

It’s been a long road, she said. A road filled with frustration, sadness and worry.

“So often people would say, ‘How’s Bob?’” said Menchhofer, 70, of Chesterfield. “But they would never say, ‘How are you?’”

Study finds Alzheimer’s manifests differently in Hispanics

Certain symptoms associated with the development of Alzheimer’s disease, including agitation and depression, affect Hispanics more frequently and severely than other ethnicities. The findings, published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience (JNCN), suggest that Alzheimer’s disease manifests itself differently in Hispanic populations.

“Our study shows that the severity and proportion of neuropsychiatric symptoms is significantly higher in a Hispanic group compared to non-Hispanic whites,” says lead researcher Ricardo Salazar, M.D., a geriatric psychiatrist at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso (TTUHSC El Paso). “This could have a significant impact on the treatment and understanding of how Alzheimer’s disease progresses in Hispanics.”

6 Big Mysteries of Alzheimer's Disease

Despite intensive, worldwide research efforts for more than three decades to better understand Alzheimer's disease, there are still numerous mysteries surrounding the condition.

Alzheimer's disease is a slowly progressing brain disorder. In people with the condition, abnormal deposits of a protein called amyloid-beta forms sticky plaques in the brain, and strands of the protein tau twist around, causing tangles that ultimately kill brain cells and cause a loss of memory, thinking and reasoning skills.

10 daily apps to help caregivers take care of their loved ones

Balancing schedules. Remembering medication. Tracking symptoms.

Being a caregiver for a family member can be as taxing as it is rewarding, and the role often goes underappreciated. While a support network of family and friends is crucial, apps can help alleviate some of the stresses that come with caregiving.

Trial Helps Doctors Tell Lewy Body Dementia From Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s

Summary: A new study reports on how the clinical profiles of Lewy body dementia differ from Alzhiemer’s or Parkinson’s disease.

Source: Ohio State University.

Knowing that many clinicians find it difficult to correctly diagnose patients with Lewy body dementia, researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center set out to develop a clinical profile for these patients. Their findings are published online in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

The study compared 21 patients with Lewy body dementia to 21 patients with Alzheimer’s disease and 21 patients with Parkinson’s disease. The patients were carefully matched by age, gender, education, race, degree of cognitive impairment, and degree of motor (physical) impairment. Pairs were compared using cognitive, functional, behavioral and motor measures.

As employees care for aging parents, few firms step up to help

Teresa Briggs still had a 17-year-old son at home when her father was diagnosed with brain cancer.

As her father’s health deteriorated over the next two years, Briggs, a managing partner and vice chairwoman of Deloitte LLP’s western region, split her time between being a mom, a daughter and a caregiver, managing her father’s business and navigating her own career.

It wasn’t easy.

The road to 2025: will a treatment for Alzheimer’s be available?

World leaders have committed to the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer's Disease by 2025, but contemporary drug development is often slow. In this post, Dr. Jeffrey Cummings draws from his recent review in Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy to discuss how likely success will be, and suggests ways to make it more likely that this ambitious target will be met.

What to Do When Alzheimer’s Threatens to Tear Your Family Apart

Having a family member with Alzheimer’s disease is a stressful situation. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, “Dealing with Alzheimer’s can bring out many strong emotions. As the disease progresses caregiving issues can often ignite or magnify [existing] family conflicts.”

Carole Larkin (personal interview), a certified dementia consultant in Dallas, estimates that 30% of her clients have conflict among family members. She says you can double that for blended families.

Why Trump and Clinton Are Proposing Benefits for Family Caregivers

Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have proposed new benefits for Americans who take care of elderly relatives—and new data shows how big a pocketbook issue this is for many families.

More than 40% of family caregivers spend $5,000 or more of their own money each year on food, clothing, transportation, medical care and other costs for their aging loved ones, according to a study released Monday by Caring.com.

NIA boosts Alzheimer’s research network with two new centers

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) at NIH is pleased to announce two new additions to its Alzheimer’s Disease Centers Program—a network of researchers and clinicians developing and sharing new approaches and findings to speed discovery in dementia research. The Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center (ADCC) in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Wake Forest ADCC in Winston Salem, North Carolina—each to receive an estimated $9 million over the next five years—will boost the NIH-funded research network to 31 centers nationwide.

Relief may be on the horizon for the Sandwich Generation if elder-care leave catches on

If this is the beginning of a trend, the Sandwich Generation can heave a sigh of relief. Under pressure to care both for their children and for their aging parents, most working professionals feel demands on both their on time and resources. And looks like their complaints are finally being heard.

In what supporters hope could be the start of a trend, professional-services firm Deloitte has said that its employees will receive additional benefits — up to 16 weeks of fully paid leave to care for and spend time with family members — this includes time to tend to spouses, children beyond infancy and aging parents. Also under this family leave program, mothers are eligible for up to six months of paid time off when factoring in short-term disability for childbirth.