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Rise In New Cases Of Alzheimer's And Dementia, Even In The 'Oldest Old'
The number of people with Alzheimer"s and dementia - both new cases and total numbers with the disease - continues to rise among the very oldest segments of the population in contradiction of the conventional wisdom, according to research reported today at the Alzheimer"s Association 2009 International Conference on Alzheimer"s Disease (ICAD 2009) in Vienna.

Test For Strep Bacteria In Pregnant Women Misses More Cases Than Expected, Study Shows
A federal recommendation that all pregnant women undergo testing for Group B strep bacteria has helped increase the number of screenings but also has produced a high level of false negatives, according to a study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the AP/Newark Star-Ledger reports. Group B strep is a common bacteria in the intestines or lower genital tract. Although it poses no harm to most adults, during delivery it can be spread to infants, who can develop blood infections, pneumonia, meningitis, mental retardation, hearing and vision loss, or death. Problems occur in fewer than one in 3,000 births, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2002 issued a recommendation that all pregnant women be tested because of the potential for serious complications. The study is the first research to examine the screening program. The researchers examined data on Group B strep cases in 10 states, finding that 250 infants out of nearly 7,700 were born with the infection. They compared the results with a similar study that was conducted before the CDC recommendations were in place, finding that the screening rate rose from 48% to 85% of pregnant women. The study also found that infant infections from Group B strep declined by 27%.Researchers predicted there would be between 44 and 86 false negatives in full-term infants, based on data from previous studies. However, their results showed about 60% of infected infants -- 116 cases -- were born to women who had tested negative for Group B strep. Researchers noted that the timing of a Group B test might play a role because the infection can come quickly, and tests could have been performed before the bacteria appeared. CDC recommends that pregnant women be screened between 35 and 37 weeks" gestation. CDC researcher Stephanie Schrag, who co-authored the study, said, "Maybe it was a true negative test, and the mother later became colonized" with the bacteria before delivery (Stobbe, AP/Newark Star-Ledger, 6/17).
News of the day
Social Entrepreneurship At University Of Queensland Business School
Seven UQ Business School students learnt a valuable entrepreneurship lesson this semester - business isn"t just about making money, it"s about improving peoples" quality of life.
Endocrinology

Young Scots From Deprived Backgrounds More Likely To Die From Heart Disease

In Scotland, young men and women (ages 35-44) from socially deprived groups are around six times more likely to die from heart disease than the most affluent individuals in the same age range, according to research published on bmj.com today. The results reveal that this disparity diminishes with age but only disappears for people who are 85 or over. The number of people dying from heart disease in Scotland has halved in the last two decades but the country still has some of the highest deaths in Europe and globally, says the study. And while the overall number of deaths from heart disease in Scotland is decreasing, this decline is slowing down in young adults, especially those from deprived groups, say the authors. The research team, led by Professor Simon Capewell, a clinical epidemiologist from the University of Liverpool, argue that the slow down is not due to poor treatment provision but is linked to unhealthy social environments and high risk behaviour like smoking and poor diet. They maintain that these factors are more common in individuals from deprived backgrounds and that this study reveals major social inequalities in Scotland. The authors surveyed death rates from heart disease in Scotland from 1986 to 2006. The study included men and women aged 35 and over. They conclude that: "These mortality changes reflect social gradients in unhealthy behaviour, lifestyle and circumstances resulting in poor diet and high tobacco consumption leading to unfavourable levels of major coronary heart disease risk factors. These inequalities are persisting in spite of the widespread and constant health promotion and health prevention initiatives, which suggests substantial and continuing barriers to healthy changes." In an accompanying editorial, Professor Alastair Leyland, from the Medical Research Council in Glasgow, agrees that it is extremely worrying that the slowing of improvements at younger ages is confined to the most deprived groups and asks why these young Scots are "not sharing in the benefits seen by others?" Given health promotion programmes have had limited success, Leyland argues that perhaps it is time "to tackle the social inequalities themselves - unequal distribution of power, money, res and life chances." The British Medical Journal


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