Yearly Archives: 2013

A 12 week consultation has been launched in the UK to establish a full set of quality standards and guidance for social care

The Department of Health, UK is seeking ideas from care users, their families and carers, service commissioners, care providers and front line staff to help decide on future topics for NICE guidance and standards.
Some of the potential NICE standards for discussion in the consultation include:

• falls
• deprivation of liberty safeguards
• medicines management in home-based settings

NICE provides evidence-based guidance to support healthcare professionals and others to make sure that the care they provide is of the best possible quality and offers the best value for money. Care providers will be able to use these standards and guidance as tools to help improve their services.http://www.dh.gov.uk/health/2013/02/nice-socialcare-2/

The 12 week consultation ends on 26 April 2013.  You can respond to the consultation at the link below:

NIH-supported Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study group will undertake four clinical trials over five years

With new research funding from the National Institutes of Health, the USA’s leading Alzheimer’s disease study network will undertake four major studies aimed at finding new treatments for the disease.

The award supports the latest projects of the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS), a consortium of academic medical centers and clinics set up by NIH in 1991 to collaborate on the development of Alzheimer’s treatments and diagnostic tools.

In this round of studies, the ADCS will test drug and exercise interventions in people in the early stages of the disease, examine a medication to reduce agitation in people with Alzheimer’s dementia, and test a cutting-edge approach to speed testing of drugs in clinical trials.

Moreinformation at the link below:

A predicted cut to Europe’s research programme, Horizon 2020, occurred as the final budget figures were released by the European Council in Brussels on February 8th.

The budget has been reduced by over 12% according to the meeting’s final conclusions.

More information in the link below: 

Mounting evidence has suggested that toxic proteins that cause Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases spread from neuron to neuron in a slow crawl through the brain.

That news sparked some concern among the media and the general public: Could these proteins pass between people, too?

Highly unlikely, concluded scientists led by John Trojanowski, University of Pennsylvania, in a paper in the February 4 JAMA Neurology. Data from a large cohort of patients treated with human growth hormone from cadaver preparations suggest that injection of brain material does not spread Alzheimer’s (AD) or Parkinson’s disease (AD).

Parkinson’s Disease Itself Does Not Increase Risk of Gambling, Shopping Addiction, Study Finds

These results provide further evidence that impulse control disorders that occur in people with Parkinson’s disease are related to the exposure to the dopamine-related drugs, not just the disease itself.

More information at the link below:

Eli Lilly has been granted approval in the EU for Amyvid, a solution to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease.

Amyvid (florbetapir [18F]) is used as an imaging agent during positron emission tomography (PET) scanning to detect the presence or absence of beta-amyloid plaques in the brains of adult patients with cognitive impairment.
 
At the moment, doctors rely only on a clinical evaluation to decide whether patients with cognitive impairment are suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or some other cause of cognitive decline, so being able to see whether amyloid plaques are present in the brain will help the accuracy of diagnosis.

More information at the link below:

Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 published in The Lancet

Deaths due to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias have jumped more than threefold worldwide since 1990, according to theGlobal Burden of Disease Study 2010.

Published in December 2012 in the Lancet, the study is the first in more than two decades to examine the incidence of major diseases, injuries, and health risk factors around the globe. It finds that while fewer children perish every year than 20 years ago, adults are now suffering more from non-infectious diseases such as cancer and heart disease.

In addition, dementia is becoming more common as more people reach old age.

A link to the full report is available below:

Brain research in Europe needs a decisive and concerted effort with more investment and clearer and more innovative research and healthcare strategies.

The European Commission decided in 2012 to make May 2013 the European Month of the Brain with the overarching theme “A month to make a difference”. The Commission is therefore organising two conferences during May 2013:

• 14 May in Brussels, to showcase European projects in the field and outline future scientific efforts.
• 27-28 May in Dublin, during the Irish EU Presidency, on European policy for brain research and healthcare.

The Commission is calling upon all stakeholders interested in the subject to organise events and activities around brain research during May 2013. These could include workshops, exhibitions, “brain days”, science cafés, lab visits, media events and awareness campaigns.

The Commission may be able to support stakeholders by adding their activities to its own calendar of events.

More information at the link below: