Diabetes linked to worse word recall in older adults

US medic declared Ebola-free, leaves Nebraska quarantine

NEW YORK, Jan 13, (Agencies): Older people with type 2 diabetes may struggle more with verbal memory than their peers without the disease, a recent study suggests.

Researchers followed 705 older adults without dementia for an average of 4.6 years. At the start, participants were between 55 and 90 years old, with an average age around 70, and 348 of them had diabetes.

In people with diabetes, verbal fluency declined slightly over the course of the study, while it improved slightly in participants without diabetes, researchers report in Diabetologia.

Diabetes develops when the body can’t properly use insulin to convert blood sugar into energy and the condition is associated with obesity and aging. While diabetes has long been linked to cognitive decline and dementia, research to date hasn’t offered a clear reason for this connection.

Three times during the study, participants had brain scans to look for any signs of atrophy – tissue shrinkage – and they took cognitive tests involving verbal skills.

Although people with diabetes already had more brain atrophy at the start, there was no difference between those with and without diabetes in the rate of brain shrinkage during the study. Atrophy also didn’t appear to explain the link between diabetes and cognitive decline.

Suggest

Still, the results suggest that brain changes associated with diabetes may begin earlier than previously thought, perhaps in middle age, said lead author Michele Callisaya of the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia.

For patients, this means it would be a mistake to put off thinking about brain health until they’re older or experiencing symptoms of cognitive decline, Callisaya said by email.

“Recommendations for good brain health include physical activity, following a healthy diet, maintaining a healthy weight, checking blood pressure and cholesterol, mentally challenging the brain and enjoying social activities,” Callisaya said.

The diabetics in the study were a bit younger, 68 years old on average, compared with an average of 72 for the participants without diabetes.

Factors

Researchers accounted for age, sex, education and risk factors like current or former smoking, obesity and elevated blood pressure or cholesterol.

One limitation of the study is that the diabetics had relatively well-controlled blood sugar, and it’s possible that the connection between diabetes and changes in the brain might be more apparent in patients with higher blood sugar, the study authors note.

“There isn’t evidence that keeping blood (sugar) under control directly improves cognition or lessens cognitive decline,” said Dr Rebecca Gottesman of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. “But it is likely that long-term control of blood sugar has benefits for the brain,” Gottesman, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

Another limitation is that the study may have been too brief to detect meaningful differences in cognition and brain volume between people with and without diabetes because these changes can happen slowly.

The diabetics might have had reduced brain reserve, or the ability to withstand damage, when they joined the study, said Jill Morris a researcher at the University of Kansas Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Fairway.

The good news is there’s plenty that people can do to help keep their mind sharp, Morris said in an email.

“Keep your body and mind active,” she advised.

“Diet and exercise are key components of brain health and can simultaneously impact blood sugar levels, A fruit harvester wearing a face mask looks out the window of his car in Epuyen, Argentina on Jan 11. An Argentine judge has ordered 85 residents of a remote Patagonian town to stay in their homes for at least 30 days to help halt

an outbreak of hantavirus in which nine people have died. (AP)

insulin resistance, and cerebrovascular disease,” Morris added. “These factors are linked to important cognitive and brain-related outcomes in a variety of populations, and are especially important in individuals with type 2 diabetes.”

Also: OMAHA, Nebraska:

A US healthcare worker who was being monitored for the Ebola virus after treating patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo was released from a Nebraska hospital on Saturday after doctors said they had seen no signs of the deadly disease.

The individual, whose name was not

released for privacy reasons, did not develop Ebola symptoms during 21 days of monitoring at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, the center said in a statement.

Symptoms such as fever and abdominal pain may appear up to three weeks after contact with the virus, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The healthcare worker arrived for monitoring in Omaha on Dec 29.

Officials said the individual left the city on Saturday.

If symptoms had developed, the medic would have been moved to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, one

of only a few in the United States for treating highly infectious and dangerous diseases.

The Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo is the second worst ever and has killed 385 of the 630 people likely infected since it began six months ago, according to the World Health Organization.

JOHANNESBURG:

A four-day-old baby is a surprise bright spot in Congo’s deadly Ebola outbreak, as the country’s health ministry on Thursday called her the first child born to a mother who has recovered from the virus.

“Baby Sylvana” is healthy and does not have Ebola, the health ministry said. It tweeted a photo of the baby, her tiny mouth open in yawn or cry, in her smiling mother’s arms.

The baby is the first in this outbreak born to a mother who recovered, the health ministry said. This is rare, though babies have been born to Ebola survivors in previous outbreaks. The mother was found to have the virus last month.

Baby Sylvana was born Sunday at an Ebola treatment center in Beni, a troubled city where rebel attacks have threatened health workers’ attempts to contain the outbreak. Community resistance in a wary region facing its first Ebola outbreak also has hurt the outbreak response, with misunderstandings, vandalism and even attacks on health workers common.

This outbreak has become the second-deadliest in history, with 628 cases, 580 of them confirmed. There have been 335 confirmed deaths. More than 57,000 people have received an experimental Ebola vaccine as health workers rush to track contacts of confirmed Ebola victims in a densely populated, turbulent region near the border with Uganda and Rwanda.

Amid the challenges, Congo’s health ministry has tried to highlight successes. Last month it announced that a baby admitted to an Ebola treatment center just six days after birth had recovered from the virus. The ministry called baby Benedicte, whose mother had Ebola and died in childbirth, the outbreak’s youngest survivor.

Experts have reported worryingly high numbers of children with Ebola in this outbreak. Children account for more than one-third of all cases, UNICEF said last month. One in 10 Ebola cases is in a child under 5 years old, it said, and children who contract the hemorrhagic fever are at greater risk of dying than adults.