A study just out in the Archives of Internal Medicine provides evidence for what some doctors have suspected for a long time--that anti-psychotic medicines (like Haldol) given to patients with dementia result in a higher rate of hospitalization and death than for those who are not given these drugs.  You can read a good summary of the research here.  It turns out that 17% of patients with dementia are given antipsychotics to control their behavior upon admission to a nursing home.  Adverse effects, such as falls because of dizziness and pneumonia (associated with dry mouth) occurred within a month.  

Halpern, Sue. Can't Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Front Lines of Memory Research. Harmony: Crown. May 2008. c.272p. index. ISBN 978-0-307-40674-3. $24. SCI

Halpern's three-year inquiry into research on memory, aging, and Alzheimer's disease is an investigation of modern brain science rendered in creative nonfiction. Halpern gets to know a prominent neuroscientist, subjects herself to multiple tests (from paper-and-pencil tests to nuclear brain imaging), visits businesses involved in the quixotic race for memory-fixing drugs, and attends the Memory Olympics. She explains in plain English what science has discovered about learning and memory, what is currently agreed to improve memory, and what remains to be seen. No self-help book writer, Halpern has published four well-received books (e.g., Four Wings and a Prayer; Migrations to Solitude) and written for the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and Slate magazine; she is frank and funny about her own fears and memory lapses and gently debunks memory-boosting fads, leaving the reader with few suggestions of what the ordinary person can do. Her book documents (with references) the great strides that have been made and holds out hope for real treatments for Alzheimer's and age-related memory loss. Educational, fabulously well written, and on a hot topic. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries. [Halpern is married to nature writer Bill McKibben—Ed.]—Nancy Fontaine, Dartmouth Coll. Lib., Hanover, NH

A new study, just out, in the June 2008 issue of the Journal of Aging and Health, of more than 7000 people over 7 years further champions the notion that education and dementia are connected. The researchers from the Institut Nationald'Etudes Démographiques, the University of Pennsylvania and USC found that high school grads can expect to live 2.5 years more without  serious memory loss than those with fewer than 12 years of education.

Notably, the researchers also find that better educated people die sooner

after severe loss of cognitive ability, including the effects of

Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and dementia. Why?  "These findings are consistent with the idea that those with more  education may process tasks more efficiently or use other compensatory

mechanisms that delay cognitive impairment or delay our ability to detect

impairment," explained USC Davis School of Gerontology professor Eileen

Crimmins, corresponding author of the study.

Of course, with cognitive reserve, it's always been a chicken and egg question:  do people with more education do better in the long run because they were more cognitively able to begin with, hence their greater education, or is education itself protective?  The answer isn't clear yet, but while we're waiting, stay in school.

From an article published last week in Neurology, new that people with higher than normal belly fat are more likely to develop dementia, based on over 1000 people, ages 73-87, who had been followed since they were in their forties.

Among their findings:

- Participants with normal body weight and high belly measurements were 89 percent more likely to have dementia.

- Overweight people were 82 percent more likely if they had a low belly measurement, but more than twice as likely if they had a high belly measurement.

- Obese people were 81 percent more likely if they had a low belly measurement, but more than three times as likely if they had a high measurement.

   So the question is, what is it about belly fat, specifically, aside from obesity or being less dramatically overweight that contributes to dementia?  I'm guessing, based on new work coming out of Columbia University, that the connection is going to be high glucose levels.