Early cardiac risks linked to worse cognitive function in middle age

Blood pressure, glucose and cholesterol in 18- to 30-year-olds predicts decline

2014-03-31

(Press-News.org) Young adults with such cardiac risk factors as high blood pressure and elevated glucose levels have significantly worse cognitive function in middle age, according to a new study by dementia researchers at UC San Francisco.

The findings bolster the view that diseases like Alzheimer's develop over an individual's lifespan and may be set in motion early in life. And they offer hope that young adults may be able to lower their risk of developing dementia through diet and exercise, or even by taking medications.

"These cardiovascular risk factors are all quite modifiable," said senior author Kristine Yaffe, MD, a professor in the departments of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF, who holds the Roy and Marie Scola Endowed Chair in Psychiatry.

"We already know that reducing these risk factors in midlife can decrease the risk of dementia in old age," continued Yaffe, who is also Chief of Geriatric Psychiatry and Director of the Memory Disorders Clinic at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. "If it turns out that the damage begins before middle age, we may need to expand our focus and work on reducing heart disease risks in earlier stages of life."

The study, published March 31 in Circulation, examines data from more than 3,300 18- to 30-year-olds in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study, which began enrolling thousands of participants nationwide in 1985 to understand how heart disease develops in black and white adults.

Cardiac risk factors were measured every two to five years for 25 years, at which point those in the study underwent tests to measure their executive function, cognitive processing speed and verbal memory.

Those whose blood pressure and glucose exceeded recommended levels during the 25-year study performed worse on all three tests, while high cholesterol was associated only with poor verbal memory.

The authors cited a number of mechanisms by which elevated blood pressure and glucose could diminish cognition in middle age, such as by reducing blood supply to the brain, causing changes in brain structure and increasing inflammation and oxidative stress, which can damage neurons. Another possibility is that these risk factors may interfere with the clearance of amyloid proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease.

Since cognitive function was not measured at the beginning of the study, the authors could not estimate the cognitive change caused by these risk factors.

INFORMATION: Co-authors of the study are Eric Vittinghoff, PhD, and Mark J. Pletcher, MD, MPH, of UCSF; Tina Hoang, MSPH, of the Northern California Institute for Research and Education, San Francisco; Lenore Launer, PhD, of the National Institute on Aging; Rachel Whitmer, PhD, and Stephen Sidney, MD, of Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, Oakland; and Laura H. Coker, PhD, of Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC.

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy, a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic biomedical, translational and population sciences, as well as a preeminent biomedical research enterprise and two top-ranked hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Computer maps 21 distinct emotional expressions -- even 'happily disgusted'

2014-03-31

COLUMBUS, Ohio—Researchers at The Ohio State University have found a way for computers to recognize 21 distinct facial expressions—even expressions for complex or seemingly contradictory emotions such as "happily disgusted" or "sadly angry." In the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they report that they were able to more than triple the number of documented facial expressions that researchers can now use for cognitive analysis. "We've gone beyond facial expressions for simple emotions like 'happy' or 'sad.' We found a strong consistency ...

Using your loaf to fight brain disease

2014-03-31

A humble ingredient of bread – baker's yeast – has provided scientists with remarkable new insights into understanding basic processes likely involved in diseases such as Parkinson's and cancer. In a new study published today (Monday March 31) in the prestigious journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science), the team from Germany, Leicester, and Portugal detail a new advance – describing for the first time a key feature in cellular development linked to the onset of these devastating diseases. The research team is from the University Medical Center Goettingen, ...

Can antibiotics cause autoimmunity?

2014-03-31

(PHILADELPHIA) -- The code for every gene includes a message at the end of it that signals the translation machinery to stop. Some diseases, such as cystic fibrosis and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, can result from mutations that insert this stop signal into the middle of an essential gene, causing the resulting protein to be truncated. Some antibiotics cause the cell's translation machinery to ignore the stop codons and are therefore being explored as a potential therapy for these diseases. But new research reported online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ...

Self-healing engineered muscle grown in the laboratory

2014-03-31

VIDEO: After veins grow into the implanted engineered muscle fibers, blood cells can be seen traveling through them, sustaining and nourishing the new tissue. Click here for more information. DURHAM, N.C. -- Biomedical engineers have grown living skeletal muscle that looks a lot like the real thing. It contracts powerfully and rapidly, integrates into mice quickly, and for the first time, demonstrates the ability to heal itself both inside the laboratory and inside an animal. The ...

Ancient whodunit may be solved: The microbes did it!

2014-03-31

Evidence left at the crime scene is abundant and global: Fossil remains show that sometime around 252 million years ago, about 90 percent of all species on Earth were suddenly wiped out — by far the largest of this planet's five known mass extinctions. But pinpointing the culprit has been difficult, and controversial. Now, a team of MIT researchers may have found enough evidence to convict the guilty parties — but you'll need a microscope to see the killers. The perpetrators, this new work suggests, were not asteroids, volcanoes, or raging coal fires, all of which have ...

Experimental cancer drug reverses schizophrenia in adolescent mice

2014-03-31

Johns Hopkins researchers say that an experimental anticancer compound appears to have reversed behaviors associated with schizophrenia and restored some lost brain cell function in adolescent mice with a rodent version of the devastating mental illness. The drug is one of a class of compounds known as PAK inhibitors, which have been shown in animal experiments to confer some protection from brain damage due to Fragile X syndrome, an inherited disease in humans marked by mental retardation. There also is some evidence, experts say, suggesting PAK inhibitors could be used ...

Possible explanation for human diseases caused by defective ribosomes

2014-03-31

Ribosomes are essential for life, generating all of the proteins required for cells to grow. Mutations in some of the proteins that make ribosomes cause disorders characterized by bone marrow failure and anemia early in life, followed by elevated cancer risk in middle age. These disorders are generally called "ribosomopathies." How can ribosomopathies first appear as diseases caused by too few cells, but later turn into diseases caused by too many cells? This paradox has puzzled the scientific community for years. A new study, which uses a genetic approach to examine ...

Oxygen depletion in the Baltic Sea is 10 times worse than a century ago

2014-03-31

This news release is available in German. After several years of discussions, researchers from Aarhus University (Denmark), Lund University (Sweden) and Stockholm University (Sweden) have determined that nutrients from the land are the main cause of widespread areas of oxygen depletion. The results were published on 31 March in the prestigious American journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Nutrients are the villain The deepest areas of the Baltic Sea have always had a low oxygen content. The inflow of fresh water is actually limited by low thresholds ...

Scientists understand how E. coli clone has become globally distributed

2014-03-31

Scientists have for the first time come closer to understanding how a clone of E. coli, described as the most important of its kind to cause human infections, has spread across the world in a very short time. E. coli clone ST131 is one of the leading causes of urinary tract and blood stream infections and has crossed the globe at a rapid rate. Worryingly, members of this clone are becoming more resistant to antibiotics. As an indication of scale, more than half of all women will suffer a urinary tract infection at least once in their lives. An international team of scientists, ...

Researchers announce first phononic crystal that can be altered in real time

2014-03-31

Using an acoustic metadevice that can influence the acoustic space and can control any of the ways in which waves travel, engineers have demonstrated, for the first time, that it is possible to dynamically alter the geometry of a three-dimensional colloidal crystal in real time. The colloidal crystals designed in the study, called metamaterials, are artificially structured materials that extend the properties of existing naturally occurring materials and compounds. The research by academics from the University of Bristol's Department of Mechanical Engineering is published ...

Early cardiac risks linked to worse cognitive function in middle age

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: