function | Common News Update

Mar122021 by adminNo Comments

Study: Older adults with history of head injuries show decreased cognitive function

Health

March 11 (UPI) -- Adults who suffer head injuries in their 50s or younger produce lower-than-expected scores on cognitive tests at age 70, a study published Thursday by the Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology found. Although head injuries do not appear to contribute to Alzheimer's disease-related brain damage, they may make people more vulnerable to dementia symptoms, the researchers said. Advertisement Seventy-year-olds who had experienced a serious head injury 15 or more years earlier on average scored 46 on 93-point cognitive tests for attention and quick thinking, lower than the 48 for those without a history of head injuries, the data showed. They also had 1% smaller brain volumes and differences in brain structure, which may explain the subtle cognitive differences compar...

Mar302019 by adminNo Comments

Heart disease in short people comes from poor lung function, study say

Health

March 29 (UPI) -- When it comes to developing heart disease, a person's height may matter more than their diet. For shorter people, having poorly functioning lungs can cause heart disease, according to new research published Wednesday in Communications Biology. "Understanding the causal relationship behind an observation such as the inverse relationship between adult height and heart disease risk is important in advancing our knowledge about the disease and has the potential to point towards lifestyle interventions that can impact disease prevention," said Panos Deloukas, a researcher from Queen Mary University of London and study senior author, in a news release. The researchers found that the lung function had a bigger impact on whether shorter people developed traditional risk factors...

Mar182019 by adminNo Comments

Lower blood pressure boosts brain function in elderly, study says

Health

March 18 (UPI) -- Having lower blood pressure can boost brain function in older adults, a new study says. When elderly people took medicine to keep their systolic blood pressure around 130 mm for three years, they were less likely to suffer a heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular event, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 68th Annual Scientific Session. "I think it's an important clinical finding and a very hopeful one for elderly people who have vascular disease of the brain and hypertension," said William B. White, a researcher at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine's Calhoun Cardiology Center and study principal investigators. "With the intensive 24-hour blood pressure treatment we reduced the accrual of this brain damage by 40 p...

Jan62019 by adminNo Comments

Some with schizophrenia have similar brain function to healthy people

Health

Jan. 4 (UPI) -- The brains of healthy people may be similar to those of people with schizophrenia, a study says. A study of 179 people -- 109 with schizophrenia and 70 without it -- published Friday in the American Journal of Psychiatry shows the brain similaries in MRI scans and facial recognition tests. The findings, which reflect participants with and without the condition, broke participants down into three distinct facial types -- typical, over-activated and de-activated profiles -- helping the researchers determine similarities and differences between each of them. "We think those with over-activated networks may be 'inefficient' in terms of brain activity -- they probably struggled more and needed to work harder to do the same task compared to the other groups," says Dr. Hawco. "Th...

Oct252018 by adminNo Comments

Whole-brain radiation procedure preserves cognitive function in trial

Health

Oct. 23 (UPI) -- Patients' cognitive functions can be preserved if the hippocampus portion of the brain is avoided during radiation, according to the results of a clinical trial. Researchers compared hippocampal-avoidance radiotherapy with traditional whole-brain radiation for patients with brain metastases. They presented their practice-changing findings Tuesday at the American Society for Radiation Oncology Annual Meeting in San Antonio and are in the process having them published in an academic journal. The hippocampus, which is located under the cerebral cortex, is the part of the brain associated with cognitive function, including memory. In brain metastases, cancer cells have spread to the brain from primary tumors in other organs. Brain metastases affect up to 45 percent of adults...