Glaxo Smith Kline Plc is likely to delay marketing its troubled Avandia diabetes pill as an Alzheimer’s disease treatment because patients are reluctant to volunteer for research studies.
Glaxo, Europe’s largest drugmaker, has lost more than 33 percent of Avandia’s $3.3 billion in annual sales since a report in May tied the pill to heart attacks. Glaxo is trying to transform the drug into an Alzheimer’s therapy after a preliminary study in 2005 suggested that Avandia may improve memory in some patients.

Source: Bloomberg.com. Please read the entire story at www.bloomberg.com

A simple blood test to predict Alzheimer’s may be just two years away after a breakthrough by Australian researchers that drastically improves disease detection.

Two biotech companies have reported promising results in their joint venture to develop a test that could foretell whether a person will develop the degenerative brain disease long before they get the symptoms.

At present there is no way to predict Alzheimer’s and the disease can only be diagnosed with complete accuracy with a open skull examination after death.

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Source: www.news.com.au

Planning for the holiday season can be a stressful time for families. Planning for the holidays with a loved with Alzheimer’s disease can make planning even worse. But why does it have to be? Why do people stress out so much? Imagine what it is like for the person with Alzheimer’s disease. The holidays should be a time for gathering and celebrating with the ones you love.

Below are some helpful tips to help make this holiday season a bit less stressful. I hope this helps!

If your parent, spouse or friend is in an assisted living facility or a nursing home please consider the following tips:

• Schedule visits at your loved one’s best time of day. People with Alzheimer’s disease tend to get tired easy, especially during the later stages. Your loved one may appreciate late morning or lunchtime visitors more than the late afternoon or evening.
• Celebrate in a familiar setting. For many people with Alzheimer’s disease, a change of environment can cause anxiety, even if you take them to your home. Consider holding a small family gathering at the facility. Also, see if there are activities planned at the facility that you can consider joining in on.
• Keep the visitor traffic to a minimum. Have only a few family members or friends visiting in on different days. Too many people can make things more confusing.

If you’re caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s at home:

• Host quiet gatherings. Try to keep noise and stimulation of an event at a low, steady pace. Keep things as quiet as possible and encourage your loved one to rest throughout the day.
• Have holiday activities planned to do together! Try opening holiday cards or baking cookies. Your loved one can help with each and if it doesn’t work, try something else!
• Minimize decorations. Large blinking lights and large decorative displays can cause disorientation for a person with Alzheimer‘s disease. Don’t put out artificial frui,t it can be easily mistaken for real fruit. The last thing you need is a broken tooth.

The best peice of advise is to not get upset is things don’t work out perfect. Things can change fast for a person with Alzheimer’s disease. Try to take things one step at a time. Frustration is the last thing anyone needs around the holidays.

* These are all recommendations made from observations and not to be taken as professional or medical advice.

Having high blood levels of omega-3 highly unsaturated fatty acids, which are found in fish oil, may help preserve thinking ability in the elderly, according to the findings of a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The results were particularly striking among subjects with high blood pressure or high cholesterol levels.

Accumulating evidence suggests that diets that include omega-3 fatty acids, specifically, eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid,protect against the development of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, according to a Dutch research team. However, the effect of thec onsumption on thinking ability, or cognitive function has received less scrutiny.

Dr. Boukje Maria van Gelder, from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven, and associates evaluated data for 210 healthy men in the “Zutphen Study,” who were 79 to 89 years old in 1990 and had normal mental capacity. Their diets were assessed in 1990, and cognitive function was tested in 1990 and again in 1995.

Subjects who ate fish had a slower decline in cognitive function than subjects who did not eat fish.

The investigators concluded that the intake are not significantly related to cognitive impairment but are related to cognitive decline.

Van Gelder’s team recommends daily consumption of roughly 400 mg of EPA and DHA, found in fish, eggs,meats, leeks, and cereal products.

A recent studied conducted by Dr. Yves Rolland of Hospital La Grave-Casselardit in Toulouse, France shows that nursing home residents with Alzheimer’s disease who participate in a moderate exercise program have a significantly slower deterioration than those who receive routine medical care.

Dr. Yves Rolland and colleagues studied the effects of a program of exercise for one hour twice weekly on activities of daily living, physical performance, nutritional status, behavioral disturbance and depression among 134 Alzheimer’s disease patients in nursing homes. The average age was 83yrs old.

At the end of the 12 months, the average activities-of-daily-living score was significantly more improved in the exercise group than in the routine medical care group, Rolland’s team reported.

Many nursing homes now have excersie programs for residents. Another added benefit for residents is the socialization. I find that residents of nursing homes, or specialized dementia/alzheimers communites benefit greatly from regulated excersise programs.

Recently www.alz.org released a new data publication that was truly shocking. The total worldwide cost of dementia care is estimated to be $315.4 billion annually, according to new data published in “An Estimate of the Total Worldwide Societal Costs of Dementia in 2005,” in the April 2007 issue of Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

The costs were based on an estimated world dementia population of 29.3 million persons. 77 percent of the total costs occurred in the world’s more developed regions, which have 46 percent of the dementia prevalence.

$315.4 billion is higher than the total budget of all but eight of the world’s countries. (According to the 2007 CIA World Factbook, only the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, U.K., Italy, China and Spain have 2007 budget expenditures greater that $315.4 billion.)

Being in this indusrty it is no surpirse how high the cost is. Everyday people are developing alzheimers and demntia snd the need for care services is on the rise.

Read more of this article at : http://www.alz.org/media_8491.asp