Two teenage girls who worked at a nursing home have been charged with abuse, accused of taunting, spitting on and groping residents who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.According to the criminal complaint, filed Monday, 19-year-old Brianna Broitzman and 18-year-old Ashton Larson laughed earlier this year as they spit in residents’ mouths, poked and groped their breasts and genitals, and at times mocked them until they screamed.Broitzman and Larson, who worked as part-time aides at the home, have been charged as adults.

Four other teens who worked with them at the Good Samaritan Society were charged as juveniles for failing to report the incidents.
A total of eight teens were allegedly involved in the incidents, but there was no record of criminal charges being filed against two of them.

Broitzman and Larson are charged with assault, abuse of a vulnerable adult by a caregiver, abuse of a vulnerable adult with sexual contact, disorderly conduct and failing to report suspected maltreatment. All are gross misdemeanors.

The Minnesota Department of Health released a report in August showing that 15 residents with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia disorders were abused at the facility between Jan. 1 and May 1.

According to the complaint filed Monday, one of the aides said the group gathered at work or school to “talk and laugh about the incidents.”

Mark Anderson, administrator at the Good Samaritan Society in Albert Lea, told WCCO-TV that the past few months have been difficult for the staff, the home’s residents and their families.”We are just really thankful that the proceedings are moving forward and hopefully can see some closure to this whole process,” Anderson said.

Researchers are reporting that the largest and longest independent clinical trial to assess ginkgo biloba’s ability to prevent memory loss has found that the supplement does not prevent or delay dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

The study is the first trial large enough to accurately assess the plant extract’s effect on the incidence of dementia, experts said, and the results dashed hopes that it is an effective preventative. In fact, there were more cases of dementia among participants who were taking ginkgo biloba than among those who were taking a placebo, though the difference was not statistically significant.

For the trial, researchers from five academic medical centers in the United States recruited 3,069 community volunteers 75 and older. Most were cognitively normal, but 482 had mild cognitive impairment.

About half were given two doses of 120 milligrams of ginkgo biloba extract daily, while the other half were provided with placebo pills. Neither the participants nor the doctors knew who was receiving which pills. They were followed for a median of 6.1 years and assessed every six months for dementia.

During the study period, 523 cases of dementia were diagnosed. Of those, 246, or 16.1 percent, were in placebo users, and 277, or 17.9 percent, were in people taking ginkgo biloba.

 

 

Source:wallstreetjournal.com

The Silver Alert system notifies law enforcement agencies and the general public when an adult has disappeared or has gone missing. Recent reports suggest that up to 14 million seniors will develop Alzheimer’s disease in the next few decades, and that up to half of them are likely to wander. The bill would allow for up to $5 million per year between 2009 and 2013 to be spent implementing the silver alert system.

The bill, the National Silver Alert Act (H.R. 6064), also would reauthorize Kristen’s Act, which was established to create a national database to track missing adults who are endangered due to age or diminished mental capacity. The Kristen’s Act re-authorization would provide an additional $4 million per year over the next decade to help families locate and recover missing adults.

A form of vitamin B3, Nicotinamide has been found to get rid of Alzheimer’s disease-related memory problems in lab mice, according to new research. Vitamin B3 is available over the counter at a low price.

The study showed that when mice that were bred to exhibit symptoms of Alzheimer’s received the human equivalent of two or three grams of B3, they acted as if they had never developed the disease, said one University of California researcher.

The vitamin acts in the brain to clear tau “tangles,” of Alzheimer’s disease. While the vitamins are available over the counter and are relatively safe, researchers warn that high doses such as the ones used in the study could potentially be dangerous. Researchers are currently enlisting people for human trials. Their research appears in the November 5 online version of the Journal of Neuroscience.

A new study found that vitamin B supplements don’t slow cognitive decline in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease.

The theory was that vitamin B might slow the progression of Alzheimer’s symptoms because the nutrient lowers homocysteine levels, which are elevated in people with the disease. Homocysteine is an amino acid produced by the body and has also been linked to an increased risk of heart disease.

“The results of the study indicate that we were successful in lowering homocysteine levels, but this did not translate into cognitive or clinical benefits,” said lead researcher Dr. Paul S. Aisen, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, Department of Neurosciences. “The disappointing conclusion is that high-dose B vitamin treatment is not helpful in Alzheimer’s disease.”

Aisen thinks this study clearly demonstrates that people should not be taking vitamin B thinking it will combat the disease.

“This treatment is not useful and should not be recommended,” Aisen said. “Because Alzheimer’s disease is one of the major health-care problems in this country and worldwide, and because our current treatments are not adequately effective, many people are seeking alternatives, and one alternative has been to use vitamin therapy.”

The findings were published in the Oct. 15 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

For the study, Aisen’s group randomly assigned 409 people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease to high doses of folate, vitamin B6 and B12 or a placebo. The researchers then measured the rate of cognitive decline using the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale.

Over 18 months, they found that although vitamin B reduced homocysteine levels, there was no reduction in the rate of cognitive decline among patients taking the supplements. In fact, there was no significant difference in the scores on the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale among those taking supplements and those receiving a placebo.

Interestingly, the people taking high-dose vitamin B supplements had more symptoms of depression than those taking a placebo, the researchers noted.

Dr. Sam Gandy, chairman emeritus of the Alzheimer’s Association Medical and Scientific Advisory Council, said this study should put an end to the idea that lowering homocysteine levels helps Alzheimer’s patients.

“Since cerebrovascular disease pathogenesis and that of Alzheimer’s disease bear some relationship to each other, the hypothesis was put forward that if people were given B vitamin supplements to control their blood homocysteine, then this might lower the incidence of both stroke and Alzheimer’s disease,” he said. “Sadly, for the latter at least, the hypothesis has been rejected: Even among those with elevated homocysteine levels that were normalized with B vitamins, there was no obvious benefit in terms of lowering the risk for Alzheimer disease.”

Like similar studies with antioxidants, anti-inflammatory drugs and estrogen, this study suggests that treating the risk factors for Alzheimer’s after the patients have established disease is not useful and may even be harmful,” he said.

Pamela Mason, a spokeswoman for the Health Supplements Information Service, cautioned that vitamin B is a dietary supplement, not a drug, and shouldn’t be expected to perform like a drug.

“This is yet another study attempting to use high-dose vitamin supplements like drugs in the treatment and prevention of disease,” Mason said in a news release. “B vitamin supplements are not intended to be taken like drugs to prevent or treat Alzheimer’s disease. People should not be taking them for this purpose. They are health supplements, and their role is in helping to maintain good health, particularly in those large numbers of adults whose dietary intake is low. This study, like many other recent studies evaluating vitamins, does not address the issue of health maintenance.”

A new study results further prove scientists’ warnings about the risks of stroke involved with giving elderly patients antipsychotic drugs. There is an increased risk of stroke with both typical and atypical antipsychotics, said study author Dr. Ian Douglas, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Similar findings date back at least six years, according to other researchers.”This risk is substantially higher in patients with dementia than those without. These findings need to be factored into prescribing decisions made by doctors caring for patients with often-distressing and difficult-to-treat psychiatric symptoms,” Douglas said.

Douglas and a colleague studied nearly 6,800 individuals who were taking antipsychotic drugs and had suffered a stroke. Those taking the drugs were 1.7 times more likely to suffer a stroke. The rate more than doubled, to 3.5 times more likely, for dementia patients taking antipsychotics. Study findings were published late last week in the British Medical Journal online.

A special type of positron emission tomography (PET) scan appears to detect abnormal brain proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Spotting early brain changes related to Alzheimer’s can be a daunting task. Abnormal proteins called beta-amyloid plaques are a hallmark of the disease, but the only surefire way to examine such changes is to perform a brain biopsy.

A growing body of evidence suggests that PET scanning using a novel brain-imaging agent called Pittsburgh Compound B (PiB) may help offer a definitive diagnose of Alzheimer’s disease in living patients. PET scans reveal functional information about the body, such as blood flow, metabolic problems, and chemical activity. PiB attaches to Alzheimer’s-related brain deposits; it is injected into a vein before the scan.

For the current study, researchers in Finland compared PiB PET scan results to brain tissue samples taken from 10 patients with severe dementia. Each patient’s brain biopsy was deemed medically necessary because they showed signs of abnormal fluid buildup in the brain — suspicious indications of a condition called normal-pressure hydrocephalus (NPH). NPH also causes mind and memory problems, and some patients with symptoms of the condition have brain lesions characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease.

Analysis of the brain tissue showed that six patients had beta-amyloid plaques, a telltale sign of Alzheimer’s disease. Each patient received an injection of PiB through a vein and then underwent a 90-minute PET scan. All patients with the Alzheimer’s-related plaques had a higher uptake of the imaging compound than those without the abnormal proteins. In other words, the brain areas afflicted by Alzheimer’s disease-related changes brightly lit up.

The findings appear online today and will be published in the October 2008 print issue of Archives of Neurology.

Marriage or having a partner cut the risk of developing dementia in half, a new Swedish research study showed.The Swedish study shows the importance of social interaction between couples. Researchers say single middle-aged people are more likely to develop cognitive impairment than their partnered counterparts.

Swedish researchers examined 1,449 Finnish people who were asked about their relationship status in mid-life and then again in 1998, an average of 21 years later. 139 of them had some sort of cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer’s had been diagnosed in 48 of these.

The study highlights a greater risk of developing cognitive impairment for all those who live alone, whether single, divorced or widowed. Social isolation or lack of personal contact also carries an increased risk of dementia and mental decline.

The results of the study were released yesterday at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Chicago.

Even after other factors which might have an impact on dementia were adjusted for, researchers concluded that those with partners had a 50 percent lower risk of showing signs of senility in later life compared to those who lived alone. Lonely people had a double risk of dementia. Those widowed at a young age who stayed single faced a six times greater chance to develop dementia.

“Cognitive and intellectual stimulation has been reported to be protective against dementia in general,” said study author Krister Hakansson, of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. “Living in a couple means that you are confronted with other ideas, perspectives and needs. You have to compromise, make decisions and solve problems together with someone else, which is more complicated and challenging. It is probably easier to get stuck in your own habits and routines if you live by yourself.”

Treatment with the experimental metal-protein attenuating compound PBT2 is a safe and tolerable means of improving executive function in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, new research suggests.

Executive function refers to a set of mental processes used to plan, organize, focus attention and manage time. Defects in executive function are strongly associated with attention deficit and learning disabilities. Individuals with poor executive function also have trouble with memory.

Researchers found that PBT2 altered disease biomarkers, molecules that coincide with the present of disease, in cerebrospinal fluid, but not in plasma. This supports the idea that a central mechanism of action is involved in amyloid-beta metabolism, the researchers report in an online issue of The Lancet, Neurology.

They explain that amyloid-beta is a protein in the body that forms amyloid plaques in the brain, a key feature of Alzheimer’s disease. The new PBT2 compound targets the chemical processes of zinc and copper, the metal ions involved in amyloid-beta formation, and thus indirectly prevents the biogenesis of amyloid-beta.

Based on strong laboratory evidence and other convincing research, Dr. Craig W. Ritchie and colleagues from the PBT2-201-EURO study group conducted a phase IIa study of PBT2 that included 78 patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. All of the patients were taking a stable dose of an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor drug to preserve the brain’s neuroreceptors..

The subjects were randomly assigned to receive PBT2 at a daily dose of 50 or 250 mg or to receive placebo. Although the researchers examined biomarker and cognition endpoints, the main focus was on the safety and tolerability of PBT2, according to the report.

Over half of the patients experienced at least one treatment-related event, but only four patients dropped out of the study, Ritchie, from Imperial College London, and colleagues note. Overall, 50 percent of patients treated with the lower dose of PBT2 and 62 percent given the higher dose experienced a side effect compared with 48 percent of placebo patients. None of the events in the active treatment groups were severe.

Read the entire article at: www.healthcentral.com

Two studies related to experimental Alzheimer’s therapies reported positive results today at the 2008 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease (ICAD 2008) in Chicago.

One Phase II trial, of a compound called AL-108, targeted early abnormal brain changes in a protein called “tau” in a condition related to Alzheimer’s called mild cognitive impairment (MCI: 26.20, +0.25, +0.96%). The researchers saw improvement on various measures of memory. Another study examined brains of people with Alzheimer’s half of whom had diabetes, and half did not. The researchers found that people in the study who took a combination of insulin and oral anti-diabetes medications had fewer Alzheimer’s-related brain changes (amyloid plaques) than all the others in the study. This could be a pathway for developing new treatments.

Plus, a new study from the Mayo Clinic showed higher than expected rates of MCI in a large, older population. People with MCI have ongoing memory problems, but they do not have other losses such as confusion, attention problems, and difficulty with language. People with MCI are much more likely to get Alzheimer’s than the general population.

Source: foxbusiness.com