Here is your NEWS-Line for Occupational Therapists and COTAs eNewsletter. For the latest news, jobs, education and blogs, bookmark our news page and job board or to take us everywhere with you, save this link to your phone. Also, enjoy the latest issue of NEWS-Line magazine, always free.
NEWS:
A Healthy Diet, Reading, And Doing Sports Promote Reasoning Skills In Children
Reasoning skills are crucial skills in learning, academic performance, and everyday problem-solving. According to a recent study conducted at the University of Eastern Finland, improved overall diet quality and reduced consumption of red meat, as well as increased time spent in reading and organised sports enhanced reasoning skills among children over the first two school years.
“Children with healthier eating habits showed greater cognitive development than other children. Specifically, better overall diet quality, lower red meat consumption, and higher low-fat dairy product intake were linked to better reasoning skills,” says Doctoral Researcher Sehrish Naveed of the University of Eastern Finland.
Children who spent more time in reading and organised sports showed better reasoning skills than their peers. On the other hand, excessive time spent on a computer and unsupervised leisure-
Read Full Article
Academic Decline Could be a Sign of Hearing Loss
As children across the U.S. head back to school, the American Academy of Audiology recommends that parents and teachers pay close attention to children’s hearing ability. Education is primarily delivered through auditory input and even a mild hearing loss can impact a child’s success in school.
Children with untreated hearing loss use more cognitive energy to understand what is being said or may appear to not be paying attention because they are missing what was said. A drop in academic performance could be a sign of hearing loss. According to the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, about two to three out of every 1,000 children in the United States are born with a detectable level of hearing loss in one or both ears. The total number of children with some type of hearing loss is unknown and many cases may go undiagnosed.
Read Full Article
Can a Blood Test Detect Alzheimer’s Disease?
In July, the first direct-to-consumer blood test designed to assess a user’s risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease hit the market. The test, which has not undergone Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review, measures the level of a protein called beta amyloid, a key component of plaques that form in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients, disrupting brain function.
Zaldy Tan, MD, MPH, medical director of the Jona Goldrich Center for Alzheimer’s and Memory Disorders and the Carmen and Louis Warschaw Endowed Chair in Neurology at Cedars-Sinai, sat down with the Cedars-Sinai Newsroom to answer questions about the test, as well as similar blood tests that are in development.
What do these new blood tests measure?
Blood tests for Alzheimer's disease provide a convenient way for patients to see whether they might be developing Alzheimer's-type changes or pathology in their brain ye
Read Full Article
The Immunotherapy Revolution for Autoimmune Diseases
Autoimmune diseases are a conundrum: Sometimes instead of protecting the body, the immune system turns against it. The target of its wrath varies depending on the condition. To alleviate patients' suffering, doctors must dampen the immune system. However, lacking the means to selectively target only the parts that are misbehaving, they have no choice but to broadly impair the body’s defenses, opening the door to potentially life-threatening malignancies and infections.
This tradeoff has long frustrated Aimee Payne, MD, PhD, a professor of Dermatology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who treats and studies pemphigus vulgaris, an autoimmune condition that causes the skin to blister and peel because immune proteins known as antibodies attack an adhesive molecule in skin, desmoglein 3.
“Why are we wiping out all of the immune cells, including the g
