How way of living alterations could help avert up to 40% of dementia cases

October 10, 2023 Vera

A 65-12 months-old lady consistently seeks healthcare assistance for her failing memory. She is to start with instructed it is nothing to be concerned about, then, a year afterwards, that it is “just regular getting old.” Right up until at last, the penny drops: “It’s Alzheimer’s. There is no treatment.”

Situations like this one are much too widespread.

Dementia continues to be largely underdetected, even in large-profits countries these as Canada where by rates of undetected situations exceed 60 for every cent. Beliefs that cognitive deficits are normal in elderly men and women, and the deficiency of expertise of dementia symptoms and of diagnostic criteria amongst clinical medical doctors have been discovered as the key culprits of missed instances and delayed analysis.

Age-connected memory losses really should not be shaken off as just part of ordinary ageing. Often forgetting wherever we parked the motor vehicle or where we still left our keys can materialize to everybody, but when these cases grow to be frequent it is critical to seek out healthcare assistance.

While lots of folks encountering gentle changes in their ability to think and try to remember information and facts will not go on to produce dementia, in other folks, these declines constitute an early warning indication. Study has shown that men and women with delicate changes in cognition are at a bigger risk of establishing dementia later in life.

In reality, it has been demonstrated that the disorder method (modifications in the brain’s composition and metabolism) commences decades just before the overall look of signs and symptoms these types of as memory decline. In addition, it is more and more regarded in the scientific neighborhood that interventions that intention to slow down or prevent illness enhancement are much more most likely to be successful when initiated early in the disorder system.

Inspite of this, protocols for early detection are not common in the professional medical group, in aspect due to the fact important gaps continue to be in our comprehending of dementia.

Dementia and an getting older inhabitants

In my analysis, I use sophisticated brain MRI methods to characterize brain overall health in older grown ups who are at substantial possibility of producing dementia. The purpose is to identify new biomarkers of early pathology, which could guide to enhanced detection methods in the long run.

A woman with gray hair with health care worker in scrubs. — By 2050, the number of Canadians residing with dementia is anticipated

Health officials concerned by rise in flu, RSV cases – The Suffolk News-Herald

December 9, 2022 Vera

Health officials concerned by rise in flu, RSV cases

Published 5:48 pm Friday, November 25, 2022

The Virginia healthcare community is encouraging local residents who haven’t done so to get vaccinated against the flu, get vaccinated or boosted against COVID-19, and to take personal health and safety precautions as we enter what could be a particularly intense flu and respiratory illness season.

This year’s flu season is already showing early, concerning signs that it may be worse than in recent years, Virginia Department of Health officials said in a recent news release.

There are also increasing numbers of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) cases, which may cause serious illness and hospitalization in children and older adults.

If these trends continue, healthcare officials both locally and across Virginia say this could strain healthcare systems in some communities. Virginia doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers are already being inundated with a surge of sick patients seeking care, filling hospital beds, and in many cases requiring longer hospital stays.

Data from Virginia hospitals and public health surveillance information from the Virginia Department of Health suggest that the Commonwealth faces the prospect of a particularly challenging flu and respiratory disease season throughout this fall and winter. Emergency department and urgent care clinic visits involving patient diagnoses of RSV have quadrupled since early September and remain significantly elevated.

Visits for flu-like illness are also rising – for the week ending November 5, such visits are at least four times higher than in the same week for each of the past four years, according to VDH.

In Virginia, we have seen a 41 percent increase in flu-like illness and an overall 18 percent increase in respiratory illness from the week prior. Virginia Immunization Information System data from July 1-November 9, 2022 indicates that flu vaccination uptake in children younger than 12 is lower this year as compared to the same time periods during the previous three years.

Virginia Department of Health Eastern Region Public Information Officer Larry Hill gave some general everyday techniques for people to stay safe and healthy.

“The best defense is a flu shot,” Hill said. “Also wash your hands, cover your sneeze or cough and stay home when sick.”

Likewise, the Western Tidewater Health District shared a Facebook post on Nov. 13 with information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Respiratory Syncytial Virus.

Described as a “common respiratory virus that

Health officials investigating cluster of rare Legionnaires’ disease cases in New York

October 22, 2021 Vera

Health officials on Long Island are investigating 10 reported cases of Legionnaires’ disease — a rare form of pneumonia caused by a bacteria called Legionella. The source of the cluster has yet to be identified, but New York is seeing an uptick in Legionnaires cases statewide, the Nassau County Department of Health said.

The 10 cases of the disease, first identified in October, have been reported within a one-mile radius in a Long Island neighborhood, the county’s health department said. According to CBS New York, medical teams are working on contact tracing, as well as swabbing and sampling on site to find the cases’ origins.

The cluster of cases include people between the ages of 35 and 96. As of Saturday, one person has died from Legionnaires, two are hospitalized and seven have been released from the hospital, CBS New York reported.

People can contract Legionnaires by breathing in a mist or vapor containing the Legionella bacteria, which occur naturally in the environment, according to the county health department. Legionella are commonly found in fountains, spray parks, hot tubs, showers and faucets. The disease is not spread from person to person, the health department said.

In 2018, there were nearly 10,000 cases of Legionnaires reported in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the number of cases could have been 2.7 times higher than what was reported because it is often misdiagnosed as one of the more common forms of pneumonia, the CDC said.

Symptoms of Legionnaires typically begin between two to 10 days after exposure to the bacteria and include shortness of breath, high fever, cough, muscle aches and headache. The disease usually lasts between two to five days and can range from a mild cough to a “rapidly fatal” case of pneumonia, according to the World Health Organization. Complications from the disease can include respiratory failure, shock and acute kidney failure.

The general death rate for the disease ranges from 5 to 10%, and typically depends on how severe of a case it is, where the disease was acquired, and if the patient has preexisting conditions. Those over the age of 50, current and past smokers, those with chronic lung disease and immunocompromised people are at higher risk of coming down with Legionnaires, the Nassau County Department of Health said.

Those with Legionnaires are usually treated with antibiotics, and

What the latest COVID research says about breakthrough cases and transmission : Shots

October 14, 2021 Vera

Gloria Clemons gives a COVID-19 vaccine to Navy veteran Perry Johnson at the Edward Hines, Jr. VA Hospital in Hines, Ill., in September.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

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Scott Olson/Getty Images

Gloria Clemons gives a COVID-19 vaccine to Navy veteran Perry Johnson at the Edward Hines, Jr. VA Hospital in Hines, Ill., in September.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Conventional wisdom says that if you’re vaccinated and you get a breakthrough infection with the coronavirus, you can transmit that infection to someone else and make that person sick.

But new evidence suggests that even though that may happen on occasion, breakthrough infections might not represent the threat to others that scientists originally thought.

Ross Kedl, an immunologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, will point out to anyone who cares to listen that basic immunology suggests the virus of a vaccinated person who gets infected will be different from the virus of an infected unvaccinated person.

That’s because vaccinated people have already made antibodies to the coronavirus. Even if those antibodies don’t prevent infection, they still “should be coating that virus with antibody and therefore helping prevent excessive downstream transmission,” Kedl says. And a virus coated with antibodies won’t be as infectious as a virus not coated in antibodies.

Scant evidence for easy transmission of breakthrough infections

In Provincetown, Mass., this summer, a lot of vaccinated people got infected with the coronavirus, leading many to assume that this was an example of vaccinated people with breakthrough infections giving their infection to other vaccinated people.

Kedl isn’t convinced.

“In all these cases where you have these big breakthrough infections, there’s always unvaccinated people in the room,” he says.

In a recent study from Israel of breakthrough infections among health care workers, the researchers report that in “all 37 case patients for whom data were available regarding the source of infection, the suspected source was an unvaccinated person.”

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It’s hard to prove that an infected vaccinated person actually was responsible for transmitting their infection to someone else.

“I have seen no one report actually trying to trace whether or not the people who were vaccinated who got infected are downstream — and certainly only could be downstream — of another vaccinated person,” Kedl says.

There’s new laboratory evidence supporting Kedl’s supposition. Initially, most vaccine experts predicted that mRNA vaccines like the ones made by Pfizer and Moderna that are