Tag: United States

Researchers are trying to treat early stage memory loss with nicotine patches to prevent those diagnosed from moving on to full-blown Alzheimer’s disease, according to a story on tennessean.com.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is collaborating with the University of Southern California on a two-year trial to see if mild cognitive impairment (MCI) can be treated, possibly preventing those people from moving into more progressive forms of memory loss.

There are said to be more than eight million people in the US with an MCI diagnosis.

“We believe that many if not most of the patients, if untreated, will go on to full-blown Alzheimer’s disease or something similar,” said Dr. Paul Newhouse, director of the Center for Cognitive Medicine at VUMC and national director of the study.

Newhouse said his team would like to use the treatment to see if they can both reduce memory loss and prolong the period in which sufferers functioned well.

The researchers are in the early stages of enrolling 300 people to take part in the trial.

The study, funded by the National Institute on Aging, is following up on decades of such research.

An earlier study showed the treatment worked for up to six months, while the new research is scheduled to follow people for two years to see if improvements are sustained.

“Air pollution is like diluted smoking,” according to Andrea A. Baccarelli, a professor of environmental medicine at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health; as reported by Nicholas Bakalar for the New York Times.

“Smoking causes cancer, cardiovascular disease and bone mineral density loss. So does air pollution. Even at pollution levels the Environmental Protection Agency considers acceptable, there is still an increased risk.”

Baccarelli is the senior author of a study published in Lancet Planetary Health that found that air pollution increases the risk for osteoporosis and bone fractures.

‘Investigators analyzed data from two studies,’ Bakalar reported. ‘The first tracked hospital admissions among 9.2 million Medicare recipients in the Northeast over eight years. The second looked at levels of parathyroid hormone, which aids bone health, in 692 middle-aged, low-income men in Boston.

‘The study … found that the risk for bone fractures among people over 65 increased steadily as levels of air pollution – specifically, particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers, or PM 2.5 – went up. Rates were almost five percent higher in areas with the highest concentrations of PM 2.5 than in those with the lowest.

‘The study in middle-aged men found that people living in locations with higher levels of air pollution had lower concentrations of parathyroid hormone and lower levels of bone mineral density.’

The studies controlled for race and ethnicity, income, smoking, physical activity and other variables.

Bakalar’s piece is at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/well/live/air-pollution-may-weaken-the-bones.html?emc=edit_tnt_20171129&nlid=60534081&tntemail0=y.

Four out of 10 children in the US are exposed to second-hand smoke, according to a Medical Xpress story quoting the American Heart Association.

The claim is apparently based on a new Tel Aviv University (TAU) study suggesting that parents who smoke mistakenly rely on their own physical senses to gauge the presence of tobacco smoke in the air.

“This reliance on their own physical sensory perceptions leads to misconceptions of when and where children are exposed to tobacco smoke,” said Dr. Laura Rosen of TAU’s School of Public Health and Sackler Faculty of Medicine, who led the research for the study that was recently published in Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

“No one has previously put their finger on this exposure perception problem,” Rosen said.

“This is important for the ongoing debate about restrictions on smoking in public places, since people may be exposed without being aware of it.”

The research team conducted in-depth interviews with 65 parents of young children from smoking households across Israel. They were said to have found many false assumptions and a lack of awareness of where and when the children were exposed to cigarette smoke.

“Many parents believe they are taking adequate measures to protect their children from the damage of cigarette smoke,” Rosen said. “But we found that they are not even aware of some of the exposure, and therefore do not take sufficient measures to protect their children.”

The researchers then compared the participating parents’ conceptions of second-hand smoke exposure with scientific findings from recent studies. They found that the parents believed that if they did not see or smell the smoke, their children were not exposed.

“But previous studies have shown that 85 percent of smoke is invisible, and many components of cigarette smoke are odorless,” said Rosen. “What’s more, you can’t rely on a smoker’s sense of smell, which may have been damaged by smoking.”

Other parents reported believing that if they smoked beside an open window, on a balcony or in a designated area – or ventilated a room after smoking – their children would not be exposed to smoke. “But urine tests of children whose parents smoke near open windows indicate double the normal level of cotinine, a product of nicotine,” said Rosen.

“To protect children from second-hand smoke, parents must be convinced that exposure occurs even when they themselves do not see or smell the smoke. Parents’ awareness of smoke exposure is essential to protecting children from second-hand smoke.”

The US Food and Drug Administration says that as part of its efforts to inform young people about, and help protect them from, the dangers of using tobacco products, it is expanding its ‘The Real Cost’ public-education campaign to include what it calls ‘advertising’ about e-cigarettes and other electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS).

‘New messages focus specifically on how nicotine can rewire the developing brain to crave more nicotine,’ it said in a note delivered through the Center for Tobacco Products Connect forum.

‘This is the first time FDA will explicitly address youth use of e-cigarettes through campaign advertising.

‘“The Real Cost” campaign, launched in February 2014, initially focused on reaching millions of 12-to-17-year-olds open to trying smoking or already experimenting with cigarettes.

‘An FDA-supported study by an independent research firm has indicated that exposure to this award-winning campaign between 2014 and 2016 prevented an estimated 350,000 youth ages 11 to 18 from smoking.

‘In light of this success, and considering that more than two million US teens currently use e-cigarettes, FDA is expanding “The Real Cost” to explicitly address youth vaping.’

“Expanding our highly successful public education efforts to include messaging about the dangers of youth use of these products is a critical part of our work to keep all tobacco products out of the hands of kids,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D, was quoted as saying.

See also yesterday’s story: Real Cost campaign unreal.