Condition Alters Elderly Brain Function

(American Health Newswire) - Leukoaraiosis describes diffuse white matter abnormalities on CT or MRI brain scans, and has been considered to be a normal part of the aging process. But new research shows otherwise.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic now say the common condition leukoaraiosis is not a harmless part of the aging process, but rather a disease that alters brain function in the elderly.

"There has been a lot of controversy over these commonly identified abnormalities on MRI scans and their clinical impact," Kirk M. Welker, M.D., assistant professor of radiology in the College of Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., was quoted as saying.

Leukoaraiosis, also called small vessel ischemia and often referred to as unidentified bright objects or "UBOs" on brain scans, is a condition in which diseased blood vessels lead to small areas of damage in the white matter of the brain. The lesions are common in the brains of people over the age of 60, although the amount of disease varies among individuals.

"We know that aging is a risk factor for leukoaraiosis, and we suspect that high blood pressure may also play a role," Dr. Welker added. Dr. Welker's team performed functional MRI (fMRI) scans on cognitively normal elderly participants recruited from the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging between 2006 and 2010. In 18 participants, the amount of leukoaraiosis was a moderate 25 milliliters, and in 18 age-matched control participants, the amount of disease was less than five milliliters.

The patients were imaged in an MRI scanner as they performed a semantic decision task by identifying word pairs and a visual perception task that involved differentiating straight from diagonal lines. fMRI is a special type of magnetic resonance imaging that measures metabolic changes in an active part of the brain.

Although both groups performed the tasks with similar success, the fMRI scans revealed different brain activation patterns between the two groups. Compared to members of the control group, patients with moderate levels of leukoaraiosis had atypical activation patterns, including decreased activation in areas of the brain involved in language processing during the semantic decision task and increased activation in the visual-spatial areas of the brain during the visual perception task.

Daily Aspirin Lowers Cancer Mortality

(American Health Newswire) - Could an aspirin a day keep cancer away? Aspirin has been known to help reduce the chances for heart attack and stroke, but research has also shown it can help prevent cancer.

Daily aspirin usage is associated with lower overall cancer mortality, but the association may be smaller than what was previously believed, according to a new study.

A pooled analysis of randomized trials looking at the effects of daily aspirin use as a preventive measure for vascular events found a significant decrease in overall cancer mortality, of 37%, during a 5-year follow-up analysis, and 15% during a ten-year follow-up. Despite this finding, the effects of long-term daily aspirin use on cancer mortality remain largely unknown.

In order to determine the effects that long-term daily aspirin use has on overall cancer mortality, Eric J. Jacobs, Ph.D., of the Epidemiology Research Program at the American Cancer Society in Atlanta and colleagues looked at data on 100,139 men and women from the Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort who had no prior history of cancer and had been taking a daily dose of aspirin. They used follow-up questionnaires to investigate peoples' aspirin intake.

The researchers found that among 5,138 participants who died because of cancer, daily aspirin usage was linked with slightly lower cancer mortality and was unrelated to the length of daily use.

"Our results are consistent with an association between recent daily aspirin use and modestly lower cancer mortality," the authors wrote.

However, the estimated reduced risk of 16% was much lower than the 37% reduction seen during the five-year follow-up period in the pooled analysis. Still, the researchers said even a relatively modest benefit with respect to overall cancer mortality could still meaningfully influence the balances of risk and benefits of prophylactic aspirin use.

The authors do point out a potential limitation of their study-namely that it was an observational study, not a randomized trial, so they could have either underestimated or overestimated the size of reduction in cancer mortality from aspirin usage because of confounding factors.

In an accompanying editorial, John A. Baron, M.D., of the Department of Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine writes that the findings of the study reinforce the idea that there is a link between daily aspirin use and reduced cancer mortality. "The drug clearly reduces the incidence and mortality from luminal gastrointestinal cancers, and it may similarly affect other cancers," he wrote, and noted that the findings from the American Cancer Society study may be "conservative."

However, he cautions that, "As for any preventative intervention, the benefits must be balanced against the risks, particularly when the benefits are delayed whereas the risks are not."

Senior Achievement Program Detail 2012