Seniors/Aging News

A small study of aging nuns illuminates the curious condition of "asymptomatic Alzheimer's disease" -- when brains show physical lesions, but patients display no signs of cognitive decline

WEDNESDAY, July 8 (HealthDay News) -- Women with greater language abilities in early adulthood were less likely to have Alzheimer's disease later in life, even when autopsies revealed the clear brain changes that are hallmarks of the disease.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People with more developed language skills as young adults may be better able to stay sharp well into old age, even if they develop Alzheimer's-like abnormalities in their brains, new research in the journal Neurology shows.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration announced a deal with three hospital groups on Wednesday that will save $155 billion in healthcare spending over 10 years, mainly by lowering charges for health services to the poor and elderly.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fewer than half of all Americans trust that their health insurance plans would pay for the full costs of cancer treatment and nearly two-thirds falsely believe Medicare would not pay anything, according to a survey released on Wednesday.

SUNDAY, July 5 (HealthDay News) -- The growing evidence that caffeine consumption may help treat or prevent Alzheimer's disease has received an extra boost from two new studies.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A telemedicine program designed to help Medicare beneficiaries with type 2 diabetes take care of their health didn't cut costs, and had only a "modest" effect on patients' health, researchers report in the journal Diabetes Care.

FRIDAY, July 3 (HealthDay News) -- Extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis might someday meet its match in two drugs now used to treat Parkinson's disease, suggests a new study.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - An intervention including drug and behavior therapy may help curb frequent nighttime urination or "nocturia" in elderly men, researchers have found.

THURSDAY, July 2 (HealthDay News) -- Middle-aged adults who live alone are twice as likely to develop dementia or Alzheimer's disease later in life compared to those who are married or live with a partner. And the risk is three times higher among those who are divorced or widowed, according to a new study by Swedish and Finnish researchers.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Drugs used to treat Parkinson's disease show promise as a new way to stem the rise of drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US health care giant Johnson & Johnson is to take up an 18.4 percent stake in Irish drugmaker Elan and acquire rights to Elan's Alzheimer's disease trial drugs, the companies said Thursday.

WEDNESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) -- Elderly men who exercised and received the growth hormone known as "mechano growth factor" (MGF) showed increased muscle mass, according to a British study.

WEDNESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) -- Older people who signed up for Medicare's prescription drug coverage, called Part D, spent more on drugs after enrolling than they had before but less on other types of medical care, researchers have found.

WASHINGTON - Mississippi's still king of cellulite, but an ominous tide is rolling toward the Medicare doctors in neighboring Alabama: obese baby boomers. It's time for the nation's annual obesity rankings and, outside of fairly lean Colorado, there's little good news. In 31 states, more than one in four adults are obese, says a new report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

ATLANTA - The percentage of Americans with private health insurance has hit its lowest mark in 50 years, according to two new government reports. About 65 percent of non-elderly Americans had private insurance in 2008, down from 67 percent the year before, according to preliminary data released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

You don't have to be Michael Jackson to have this problem: The odds of surviving cardiac arrest after getting CPR in a hospital are slim and have not improved in more than a decade, a big Medicare study concludes.

MIAMI (Reuters) - Since 2006, U.S. taxpayers have paid nearly $155,000 to send home health nurses to inject twice-daily insulin shots for an elderly, diabetic Miami man.