The risk for dementia is greater in neighborhoods with lower socioeconomic status in New Zealand. Moreover, decades before dementia is diagnosed, residents of these neighborhoods have more dementia-risk factors and brain-structure antecedents. These are the findings of a study published in Alzheimer’s and Dementia. Researchers conducted an observational birth-cohort analysis to determine if dementia diagnoses followed neighborhood socioeconomic gradients across New Zealand. To assess dementia in the New Zealand population, data were sourced from the New Zealand Integrated Data Infrastructure o ..read more

HealthDay News — Nonmotor seizures are often missed in the emergency department and are only realized after conversion to motor seizures, according to a study published online May 1 in Neurology. Nora Jandhyala, from NYU Langone Health in New York City, and colleagues investigated recognition of motor versus nonmotor seizures in the emergency department among 83 individuals (ages 12 to 18 years) who where neurotypical and within four months of treatment initiation for focal epilepsy. The researchers found that 70 percent of participants presented to an emergency department before diagnosi ..read more

HealthDay News — Sleep apnea and late-midlife oxygen desaturation to less than 80 percent during sleep are associated with subsequent development of late-onset epilepsy (LOE), according to a study recently published in SLEEP. Christopher M. Carosella, M.D., from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, and colleagues identified cases of LOE in Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study cohort participants. Polysomnographic data from 1,309 ARIC participants who also participated in the Sleep Heart Health Study from 1995 to 1998 were used, and the subsequent risk for LOE was asse ..read more

Less than half (46%) of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in moderate to high states of disease activity had active inflammatory RA confirmed by ultrasound (US), according to study findings published in Rheumatic & Musculoskeletal Diseases Open. The persistent pain reported by patients with RA may be related to fibromyalgia (FM), but detailed analyses on the causes of this pain have not been conducted. Therefore, investigators aimed to characterize the extent of nociplastic-like and nociceptive inflammatory pain experienced by patients with active RA. The investigators conducted a cr ..read more

Certain pharmacological interventions may hold promise for addressing sleep and circadian disruption (SCD) and intensive care unit (ICU) delirium; however, the effectiveness of these and other interventions is difficult to assess due to conflicting study results and varying study designs. These were among the findings of a scoping review published in Thorax. Researchers conducted a scoping review to examine and summarize research on various interventions for treating sleep and circadian disruption (SCD) in the ICU, with a focus on how these interventions affected delirium among adults in the I ..read more

Some COVID-19-related health outcomes were worse in US veterans with diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea, according to study findings published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. Investigators retrospectively assessed the association between OSA, COVID-19 severity, and 30-day readmission rates among veterans receiving care at the Jesse Brown Veteran Affairs Medical Center (JBVAMC) in Chicago. Indicators used to measure COVID-19 severity included the use invasive and noninvasive ventilation (NIV), vasopressor use, oxygen use, and mortality. The researchers analyzed data from the ..read more

About one-fifth of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who were living with a loved one reported inadequate social support, which was associated with worse clinical outcomes, according to study findings published in Respiratory Medicine. Researchers assessed patients with COPD living with loved ones to determine their perceived level of support for their illness, using the Medical Outcome Study — Social Support Survey (MOS-SSS). The cross-sectional study is based on the Dutch Home Sweet Home study. Patients with COPD were recruited from 7 hospitals or outpatient clinics ..read more

Among adolescents, poor academic performance and behavioral issues at school are associated with later bedtimes and irregular sleep, according to study results published in the journal Sleep. Researchers sourced data for the present cross-sectional analyses from the Future of Families and the Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal birth cohort study that was oversampled for nonmarital births, to evaluate whether dimensions of actigraphic sleep were associated with academic performance and behavior in school among adolescents in the United States. Families were eligible for inclusion in the 15-y ..read more

HealthDay News — Among participants with high-risk nonmetastatic breast cancer, daily aspirin use did not improve the risk for breast cancer recurrence or survival in early follow-up, according to a study published online April 29 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Wendy Y. Chen, M.D., from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, and colleagues evaluated whether aspirin decreases the risk for invasive cancer events among survivors of breast cancer. The analysis included 3,020 participants with high-risk nonmetastatic breast cancer, enrolled at 534 sites from Jan. 6, 2017 ..read more

HealthDay News — Older adults with diabetes are more likely to develop functional limitations than adults without diabetes, according to a study published online April 16 in the Canadian Journal of Diabetes. Andie MacNeil, from the Institute for Life Course and Aging at the University of Toronto, and colleagues compared changes in functional limitations during the COVID-19 pandemic among older adults with and without diabetes. The analysis included 6,045 participants in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, with follow-up into the pandemic. The researchers found that older adults with diab ..read more