Frontline: Alzheimer’s Disease; Mediterranean-Style Diet; Timely Heart Attack Care
Obesity, Physical Inactivity Top Risks Related to Alzheimer’s Disease
Eight modifiable risk factors were linked to more than one in three cases of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and dementia in the U.S., according to research published May 9, 2022, in JAMA Neurology. Midlife obesity was associated with 18 percent of AD and dementia cases, and physical inactivity was linked with 12 percent. The other risk factors, in descending order of frequency, were low education, midlife hypertension (high blood pressure), depression, diabetes, current smoking, and hearing loss. Adopting lifestyle strategies that reduce the risks of AD and dementia is especially important, since there is no cure for these diseases, and effective treatment options are limited. “Understanding which risk factors play a role in accelerating cognitive decline can help providers and individuals be proactive in addressing these risk factors early in their lifetime,” said Roch Nianogo, MD, PhD, one of the lead researchers.
Mediterranean-Style Diet Linked with Less Inflammation in the Gut
Canadian researchers found that a dietary pattern high in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, and fish and low in red meat, sweets, and processed foods was associated with a lower level of gut inflammation. Study participants were first-degree relatives of people who had Crohn’s disease (a type of inflammatory bowel disease), which meant the participants had a higher-than-average risk of developing an inflammatory disease in their digestive tract. They completed food frequency questionnaires reflecting their habitual diets during the year before a stool sample was collected. The researchers found that participants whose diets were most similar to a Mediterranean-style way of eating had the lowest levels of gut inflammation. The researchers also noted that the makeup of the microbiome—the system of trillions of live organisms in the gastrointestinal tract—also appeared to impact the level of inflammation. Since they observed a clear association between lower inflammation and the overall Mediterranean-style dietary pattern, but weak associations with specific food items, they suggested that dietary strategies aimed at lowering gut inflammation focus more on the dietary pattern as a whole rather than on individual foods. The study was published May 9, 2022, in the journal Gastroenterology.
Women Less Likely Than Men to Get Timely Heart Attack Care
Women are less likely than men to receive timely testing following a heart attack, according to a study published June 21, 2022, in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. Researchers analyzed data collected on more than 450,000 cases of heart attack in California. For heart attacks caused by blood vessel blockage (STEMIs) in 2005, 50 percent of men and 36 percent of women received a coronary angiography (a procedure that uses x-rays to view the heart’s blood vessels) within one day of hospital admission. (A coronary angiogram is the standard first step in treatment for a heart attack; it shows where blood flow is disrupted, allowing the physician to determine the appropriate course of treatment.) Racial discrepancies were also found: 46 percent of white patients and 31 percent of Black patients underwent timely angiography for STEMI. Data from 2015 showed improvements in timely treatment for all patients, but men were still more likely to have an angiography (77 percent) than women (67 percent) for STEMI within one day. And white patients (75 percent) were still more likely than Black patients (69 percent) to have a timely angiography.
The post Frontline: Alzheimer’s Disease; Mediterranean-Style Diet; Timely Heart Attack Care appeared first on University Health News.
