(Press-News.org) BOSTON -- An expert panel convened by the Institute of Medicine clarified the cognitive aging process by making a distinction from Alzheimer disease and related dementias, and provided recommendations to enhance cognitive health in older adults. Now a new article published in Annals of Internal Medicine highlights key points of that report and serves as a guide for health care professionals seeking to improve the quality of life of older adults by maintaining brain health.
Practitioners define "cognition" as mental functions encompassing attention, thinking, understanding, learning, remembering, problem solving, and decision making. As a person ages there is a gradual, but marked change in these cognitive functions, which is referred to as "cognitive aging."
"Cognitive aging is not a disease or a level of impairment--it is a lifelong process that affects everyone," explains lead author Dr. Sharon K. Inouye, Director of the Aging Brain Center at the Institute for Aging Research, Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston, Massachusetts and Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School. "Given the sizable number of adults approaching older age, understanding the impact of cognitive aging has become a significant health concern."
Older adults seem to share the same concern about their health as a 2014 survey by the AARP found that 93% of respondents said maintaining brain health was a top priority. In response, the Institute of Medicine committee created recommendations that focus on prevention and intervention opportunities, seek to educate health care practitioners, and help raise public awareness of cognitive health. Action areas for practitioners include:
Conduct a formal cognitive assessment to detect cognitive impairment
Screen for risk factors such as alcohol use, smoking history, and diet
Promote benefit of physical exercise, lifelong learning, social engagement and adequate sleep
Highlight importance of reducing cardiovascular risks such as hypertension and diabetes
Identify persons at high risk for delirium before or at hospital admission and institute preventive strategies
Minimize prescription of inappropriate medications
The article also covers cognitive health as it relates to driving safety, financial decision-making, use of nutraceuticals and effectiveness of brain games among older adults. "There is still more to learn about the biological process involved with cognitive aging, but there are interventions that can be made now," says Dr. Inouye. "Health care professionals play a vital role in working with older patients and their caregivers to maintain optimal brain health."
INFORMATION:
The article was funded in part by the National Institute on Aging (grants P01AG031720, K07AG041835, and R01AG044518). Dr. Inouye holds the Milton and Shirley F. Levy Family Chair.
About Annals of Internal Medicine
Established in 1927 by the American College of Physicians (ACP), Annals of Internal Medicine is the premier internal medicine journal. Annals of Internal Medicine's mission is to promote excellence in medicine, enable physicians and other health care professionals to be well informed members of the medical community and society, advance standards in the conduct and reporting of medical research, and contribute to improving the health of people worldwide. To achieve this mission, the journal publishes a wide variety of original research, review articles, practice guidelines, and commentary relevant to clinical practice, health care delivery, public health, health care policy, medical education, ethics, and research methodology. In addition, the journal publishes personal narratives that convey the feeling and the art of medicine.
About the Institute of Medicine
Established in 1970 under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine provides independent, objective, evidence-based advice to policymakers, health professionals, the private sector, and the public. The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council make up the National Academies. For more information, visit http://national-academies.org or http://iom.edu.
About the Institute for Aging Research
Scientists at the Institute for Aging Research seek to transform the human experience of aging by conducting research that will ensure a life of health, dignity and productivity into advanced age. The Institute carries out rigorous studies that discover the mechanisms of age-related disease and disability; lead to the prevention, treatment and cure of disease; advance the standard of care for older people; and inform public decision-making. The Aging Brain Center within IFAR studies cognitive aging and conditions affecting brain health.
About Hebrew SeniorLife
Hebrew SeniorLife, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, is a national senior services leader uniquely dedicated to rethinking, researching and redefining the possibilities of aging. Based in Boston, the non-profit, non-sectarian organization has provided communities and health care for seniors, research into aging, and education for geriatric care providers since 1903. For more information about Hebrew SeniorLife, visit http://www.hebrewseniorlife.org, follow us on Twitter @H_SeniorLife, like us on Facebook or read our blog.
As a new physician in Galway, Ireland, and then as a nephrology fellow at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Michelle O'Shaughnessy, MD, began to wonder whether similar treatment plans for all patients whose kidneys had failed was necessarily the best practice.
"I was struck by my patients, who were often young and on dialysis at the age of 23 or 24," O'Shaughnessy said, referring to patients whose kidneys had failed because of glomerulonephritis, a group of rare disorders that damage the kidney's ability to filter the blood.
"I thought there should be other ...
The results of a prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial of patients undergoing elective pulmonary resection was designed to evaluate the effects of statin therapy. Unfortunately, because of difficulties in enrolling patients who had never taken statins, the study was terminated early, and the sample size was smaller than anticipate. Trends in the data suggesting differences between groups failed to reach statistical significance except in a post-hoc analysis. The accompanying Editorial Commentary by Dr. Betty Tong emphasizes the potential importance ...
The microbiome of the human intestine consists of a variety of bacteria that assist in digestion, immune regulation, and other processes that are critical for human health. A subset of these bacteria produces urease, an enzyme that converts the waste product urea into ammonia. Ammonia supports a variety of physiological process. However, individuals with liver disease have excess ammonia in the blood, a condition referred to as hyperammonemia, that can cause neurotoxicity and hepatic encephalopathy. Current treatments for hyperammonemia-associated symptoms are limited and ...
(Boston)-- A major treatment breakthrough for total body scarring of the skin that occurs in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc), also known as scleroderma, may soon be available for the estimated 300,000 Americans who suffer with this condition. Currently, no treatment is available.
Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers worked with 15 SSc patients who were treated with either one or two doses of fresolimumab, a new, unapproved drug therapy that targets a chemical mediator in the body known as TGF-beta. After seven weeks of treatment, the researchers ...
DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers have analyzed size data for rodents worldwide to distinguish the truly massive mice and giant gerbils from the regular-sized rodents. They found that the furry animals with chisel-like teeth are 17 times more likely to evolve to nightmarish proportions on islands than elsewhere.
The results are in keeping with an idea called the 'island rule,' which previous studies claimed didn't apply to rodents. The study appears online in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Duke University biologists Paul Durst and Louise Roth analyzed data ...
PHILADELPHIA -- House calls, a long-running option dating back to the early days of medicine, can be used in a new way to improve geriatric care and lower costs, says a report issued last week from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
Using first year results from Penn Medicine's Truman G. Schnabel In-Home Primary Care Program and its partners in the Mid Atlantic Consortium, Medstar Washington Hospital Center and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) along with the 16 other IAH practices nationwide, CMS announced last week more than $25 million was saved ...
For severely obese people, bariatric surgery may have a benefit besides dramatic weight loss: it can also substantially reduce urinary incontinence.
A new investigation led by UC San Francisco is the first to examine the longer-term effects of the surgical procedure on incontinence three years after bariatric surgery. The study appears online June 22 in JAMA Internal Medicine.
'Our findings showing another important long-term benefit to bariatric surgery might help to motivate people who are severely overweight,' said first author Leslee L. Subak, M.D., a UCSF professor ...
Somehow, colorful tropical scarlet macaws from tropical Mesoamerica -- the term anthropologists use to refer to Mexico and parts of northern Central America -- ended up hundreds of miles north in the desert ruins of an ancient civilization in what is now New Mexico.
Early scientists began excavating the large Pueblo settlements in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico and found the birds' remains in the late 1890s, but only recent radiocarbon dating of the physical evidence has pushed back the time period of sophisticated Pueblo culture by at least 150 years, according ...
Social networks affect every aspect of our lives, from the jobs we get and the technologies we adopt to the partners we choose and the healthiness of our lifestyles. But where do they come from?
In a new study, the University of Pennsylvania's Damon Centola shows how social networks form and what that means for the ideas that will spread across them.
Counterintuitively, he finds that breaking down group boundaries to increase the spread of knowledge across populations may ultimately result in less-effective knowledge sharing. Instead, his research shows that best ...
CORVALLIS, Ore. - A study at Oregon State University indicates that both a high-fat and a high-sugar diet, compared to a normal diet, cause changes in gut bacteria that appear related to a significant loss of "cognitive flexibility," or the power to adapt and adjust to changing situations.
This effect was most serious on the high-sugar diet, which also showed an impairment of early learning for both long-term and short-term memory.
The findings are consistent with some other studies about the impact of fat and sugar on cognitive function and behavior, and suggest that ...
