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NEWS:
Caregivers Of People With Dementia Are Losing Sleep
Caregivers of people with dementia lose between 2.5 to 3.5 hours of sleep weekly due to difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep — a negative for themselves and potentially for those who receive their care, Baylor University researchers say.
But the good news is that simple, low-cost interventions can improve caregivers’ sleep and functioning.
The researchers’ analysis of 35 studies with data from 3,268 caregivers — “Sleep Duration and Sleep Quality in Caregivers of Patients with Dementia” — is published in JAMA Network Open, a publication of the American Medical Association.
Informal caregiving for a person with dementia is akin to adding a part-time but unpaid job to one’s life, with family members averaging 21.9 hours of caregiving, according to The Alzheimer’s Association estimates.
“Losing 3.5 hours of sleep per week does not seem much, but caregivers often experience accumu
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Heart Attack Patients With Mild Cognitive Impairment Get Fewer Treatments
A new study finds people who have mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which lies on the continuum of cognitive decline between normal cognition and dementia, are less likely to receive proven heart attack treatment in the hospital.
Researchers found no evidence that those with MCI would derive less benefit from evidence-based treatment that’s offered to their cognitively normal peers who have heart attacks, says lead author Deborah Levine, M.D., MPH.
“Patients should get the treatments they would want if they were properly informed,” says Levine, an associate professor of internal medicine and neurology at Michigan Medicine, the academic medical center of the University of Michigan.
Some people with thinking, memory and language problems have MCI. Unlike dementia, which severely interferes with daily functioning and worsens over time, MCI does not severely interfere with daily functionin
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Research Into Innovative Treatment Ideas For Traumatic Brain Injury
To treat a traumatic brain injury, researchers are thinking outside the box.
“A traumatic brain injury can range from mild to severe, but is usually caused by a harsh bump or blow to the head,” says Kevin Ward, M.D., a professor of emergency medicine and biomedical engineering at Michigan Medicine and director of the Michigan Center for Integrative Research in Critical Care(MCIRCC).
“A patient may experience a moment of dysfunction on the mild end, to unconsciousness and loss in brain function on the severe end of injury.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, TBI is a serious public health problem in the United States. In 2014, there were approximately 2.87 million TBI-related emergency department visits, hospitalizations and deathsthroughout the nation.
“Unfortunately, the current diagnosis, monitoring and treatment strategies for TBI have not significantly p
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'Key Player' Identified In Genetic Link To Psychiatric Conditions
Scientists have identified a specific gene they believe could be a key player in the changes in brain structure seen in several psychiatric conditions, such as schizophrenia and autism.
The team from Cardiff University's Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute has found that the deletion of the gene CYFIP1 leads to thinning of the insulation that covers nerve cells and is vital for the smooth and rapid communications between different parts of the brain.
The new findings, published in the journal Nature Communications and highlighted in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, throws new light on the potential cause of psychiatric conditions and could ultimately point to new and more effective therapies.
Though there are a number of genetic changes that can alter the risk of psychiatric disorders, one prominent change is called Copy Number Variants (CNV) and involves the del
