In the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, people experience mild memory loss and confusion. These challenges are significant, but people often maintain much of their normal capability and spirit. Now, a specialized support group program is being formed at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center to help patients learn how to live with the disease and to help family members grieve and adjust.
Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRT), a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing small molecule drugs to treat diseases of aging, announced publication of a study by Sirtris and Harvard University scientists in the journal Cell that reveals a new mechanism to slow aging.
While obesity has been shown to contribute to high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes, being overweight in old age does not lead to memory problems, according to a study published September 19, 2007, in the online edition of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
An ancient mechanism for coping with environmental stresses, including heat and toxic exposures, also helps cancerous tumors survive, reveals a new report in the Sept. 21, 2007, issue of Cell, a publication of Cell Press. The findings could lead to a new way to treat cancer and may also have implications for the treatment of neurodegenerative and other diseases, according to the researchers.
For nearly 70 years scientists have known that caloric restriction prolongs life. In everything from yeast to primates, a significant decrease in calories can extend lifespan by as much as one-third. But getting under the hood of the molecular machinery that drives this longevity has remained elusive.
People with a certain gene mutation are more likely to get Parkinson’s disease before the age of 50 compared to those without the gene abnormality, according to a study published in the September 18, 2007, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Feelings of social isolation are linked to alterations in the activity of genes that drive inflammation, the first response of the immune system, and causing higher mortality than people who are not feeling loneliness, revealed by UCLA researchers.
It’s already known that a person’s social environment can affect their health, with those who are socially isolated—that is, lonely suffering from higher mortality than people who are not.
Prof. Ehud Assia, of Tel Aviv University?s Sackler School of Medicine is, quite simply, a rock star in the field of eye surgery. One of a small number of surgeons in the world who currently perform a complicated form of glaucoma surgery, Prof. Assia has developed a novel laser device that promises to revolutionize treatment of the disease.
The deterioration in immune function that occurs as an individual ages is thought to occur because the thymus involutes with age, causing a dramatic decrease in T cell output.