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Researchers have found a way to predict the development of Alzheimer's disease years before its onset. The study was supported by the John Douglas French Alzheimer's Foundation, the Alzheimer's Association, the U.S. National Institute on Aging and Satoris, Inc. Dr. Wyss-Coray is a co-founder of Satoris, and two of his co-authors are employees of the company.

A group of proteins in blood plasma, involved in inflammatory and immune processes, appears to distinguish Alzheimer's from controls with close to 90 percent accuracy, and could one day offer a predictive diagnostic test, according to its developers. Currently there no definitive biological test for diagnosing or ruling out the presence of Alzheimer's disease or predicting its onset.

The experimental protein panel, if verified in additional tests, could also predict which patients with mild cognitive impairment may progress to Alzheimer's-type dementia within six years, reported Tony Wyss-Coray, Ph.D., of Stanford, and colleagues.

The authors, speculating that it might be possible to screen for the early signs of Alzheimer's disease by looking for changes in the concentrations of cell signaling proteins, collected 259 stored plasma samples from patients who later went on to develop Alzheimer's disease, as well as those with mild cognitive impairment, late-stage Alzheimer's, and non-demented controls. They measured levels of 120 known signaling proteins, and then used the data to develop training sets of microarrays for predictive analysis, which eventually yielded a panel of 18 proteins.Read More

According to a report in the October issue of the urology journal "BJU International" men with prostate cancer are on average four times more likely to get hip fractures. The study included more than 60,000 men aged 50 to 65.

Danish researchers discovered that prostate cancer made men 1.8 times more likely overall to suffer a fracture and 3.7 times as likely to suffer from a hip fracture. Hip fractures, however, were eight times higher in men from 50 to 65 years of age.

"Our study showed that more than three percent of hip fractures in men aged 50 and over can be attributed to prostate cancer," says lead researcher Dr. Bo Abrahamsen from Copenhagen University Hospital, Gentofte. "And the risk remains even when men have recovered from the disease."

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A new study reports that women who have more than two alcoholic drinks a day double their risk of endometrial cancer compared with those who drink less. Researchers looked at a multiethnic group of 41,574 postmenopausal women, following them for an average of eight years, questioning them about their diets and drinking habits. They found 324 cases of endometrial cancer, a type of cancer that forms in the lining of the uterus.

The study appeared online Aug. 31 and will be published in an upcoming print issue of "The International Journal of Cancer."

After controlling for body mass index, age, hormone replacement and whether they had been pregnant, researchers found that women who had less than two drinks a day had no increased risk of endometrial cancer, but those who had more than two drinks a day had a little more than twice the risk. It made no difference whether the women drank beer, wine or hard liquor.Read More

Talk about proof in the pudding. Tomoji Tanabe, the oldest man in the world at 112, attributes his longevity to a diet of vegetables. He celebrated with two birthday parties this week to mark his 112th year.

The active Mr. Tanabe was born in the same year as King George VI, who died in 1952. He said he has no plans to die and told reporters that he "wants to live indefinitely."

Mr. Tanabe was declared the oldest man in the world by the Guinness Book of Records in January. He also ascribes his longevity to not touching alcohol and not smoking. He said that he keeps a diary and reads the newspaper every day to keep his mind active.Read More

German researchers have found that the traditional Chinese acupuncture is better than either drugs or exercise in handling back pain, one of the most common chronic conditions to affect millions the world over. Conventional treatments include exercise as well as painkiller medications.

According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), the researchers conducted a large study in order to test the effectiveness of acupuncture or needle therapy in back pain. Acupuncture is one of the oldest, most commonly used medical procedures in the world. It became popular in the U.S. after a "New York Times" reporter James Reston waxed eloquent about the procedure for his post-surgical pain.

in 1996, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of acupuncture. According to the NIH Consensus Statement on Acupuncture, there have been many studies conducted to judge the effectiveness of acupuncture in various disease states. Now a large study finds that acupuncture may in fact beat conventional treatment procedures in easing low back pain. The study by researchers at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, says that even sham or fake acupuncture provided relief from back pain.Read More

The diabetes epidemic, new studies show, is destined to have another co-factor that might prove to be even more deadly than the disease itself: liver disease. It appears "high glycemic" foods such as white breads, white rice, most processed grains and sugary cereals lead to fatty liver, a condition that results in liver failure and death.

The work of Dr David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children's Hospital Boston, and colleagues, was published in the September issue of the journal "Obesity". Fatty liver is increasing in line with rising rates of obesity among Americans. The researchers hope to confirm their findings in a newly launched clinical trial with overweight children and to show that the trend can be reversed through changes in diet.

Ludwig said that fatty liver is becoming especially common among children. Many adult cases can be caused by alcoholism. This is not so in children, where between 1 in 4 and 1 in 2 overweight American children are thought to be affected by non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Ludwig said the French delicacy "pâté de foie gras" was made by feeding ducks and geese on a diet rich in high GI grains.

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Researchers from the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) recently found that if vitamin D3 levels among populations worldwide were increased, 600,000 cases of breast and colorectal cancers could be prevented each year. This includes nearly 150,000 cases of cancer that could be prevented in the United States alone.

Specifically, they estimate that 250,000 cases of colorectal cancer and 350,000 cases of breast cancer could be prevented with an increase of vitamin D3, particularly in countries north of the equator.Read More

Corn syrup, the sweetener of choice for many food manufacturers because it's cheap and easy to blend, is proving to be linked to diabetes, new research shows. Some scientists have suggested high fructose corn syrup may be contributing to the increase in diabetes and obesity. The food industry denies there is a link.

Researchers from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., analyzed the chemical content of 11 different carbonated drinks containing high fructose corn syrup. They report they found very high levels of what are called reactive carbonyls in the sodas tested. Reactive carbonyls are highly reactive compounds believed to cause tissue damage. They are also elevated in the blood of those with diabetes and have been linked to complications of the disease. One can of soda contains five-times the concentration of reactive carbonyls compared to the concentration found in the blood of an adult person with diabetes. Read More

New findings suggest that higher consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks — but not 100 percent fruit juice — may be associated with insulin resistance, even in otherwise healthy adults. Steady increases in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages over the last several decades along with increases of the incidence of Type 2 diabetes mellitus, led nutritional epidemiologists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University and colleagues to explore the relationship between sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and insulin resistance, a precursor to Type 2 diabetes. This study was published in the September issue of "The Journal of Nutrition".Read More

A recent study shows that women who have not yet gone through menopause and who undergo oophorectomy (surgical removal of the ovaries) have an increased risk of developing neurological disorders such as dementia and parkinsonism. The results come from two studies published in the online edition of "Neurology."

The research was done at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and was based on women in Olmsted County, Minnesota, who underwent oophorectomies between 1950 and 1987 for a benign ovarian condition before the onset of menopause. Parkinsonism refers to any condition that causes the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, one of the most common age-related neurological disorders. These include tremor; stiffness of the arms, legs or trunk of the body; loss of facial expression; loss of control over movement; paralysis; and impaired mental processes (cognitive dysfunction).Read More