New Treatment for Early Memory Troubles ?

  There is a clinical trial in phase 3 led by a researcher at Wake Forest which found earlier that participants that took a long-acting intranasal insulin demonstrated improved cognition in adults with mild cognitive impairment.
  Results will be made  public in 12 months. Fingers crossed for some kind of breakthrough.
  MCI (mild cognitive impairment) is a neurological disorder that occurs in older adults which manifests as cognitive impairment BUT NOT impairment in activities of daily living.
First reported in J Alzheimers Dis 2015;44(30:897-906 20

Low Fasting Insulin Doubles the Risk of Dementia

  A recent study confirmed a shocking finding of 14 years ago (which studied 2,568 Japanese American men) that low fasting insulin in middle age doubles the risk of dementia in later years.
  Insulin deficiency itself is one of the key components of Alzheimer's and that low levels of insulin or insulin resistance are associated with poor brain function.
  These researchers concluded that low insulin must involve a new pathway to dementia different from the well-known metabolic pathway in diabetes.
  Reduced brain metabolism may not be the factor linking low insulin to dementia but rather it may be the role of insulin as a growth factor maintaining the function of neurons that may be vital.
Neurology 2018:Epub 2018 Jul 11
  

ADHD Drugs BAD for Healthy College Students

  Neuroscience researchers at Brown U and URI found that healthy students taking 30 mg of Adderall daily did improve in attention and focus (as expected in those taking a stimulant) but that effect failed to translate to enhanced performance on a battery of neurocognitive tasks that measured reading comprehension and fluency as well as short-term memory.
  The investigators concluded that not only are individuals taking stimulants not benefitting from it academically but in fact they could be negatively affecting their performance.
Pharmacy (Basel). 2018;6(3).

Increased Risk of Multiple Sclerosis Relapse in Women with Abortion

  Elective or spontaneous abortion seems to be associated with radiologic and clinical inflammatory relapse in women with Multiple Sclerosis according to data from eight Italian MS centers.
  Elective abortion was associated with the higher relapse rate at 70% compared to 47% for miscarriages.
  Higher stress was suggested as a factor in the elective abortion group.
  The hypothesis for these findings suggests up-regulation of pro-inflammatory mechanisms usually occurring in the first trimester.
  Women should be informed of the risks for disease reactivation.
J Neurol Neurosg Psychiatry 2018;Epub 2018 Jul 3

Want a Large Family ? There May be an Increased Risk of Alzheimer's in Women

  According to researchers in South Korea, women who have given birth to more than five children have a much higher risk of having Alzheimer's disease compared to those with fewer children or no children.
  Women who had five or more complete pregnancies demonstrated a 1.7-fold greater risk of AD than those that completed one to four completed pregnancies or no completed pregnancies.
  High levels of estrogen during pregnancy and the abrupt withdrawal of estrogen after childbirth may be harmful to neurons and decrease cognitive reserve.
  Based on this result, researchers are planning to develop pulse hormone replacement therapy that can induce similar hormonal changes to those in the first trimester of pregnancy to evaluate it's effectiveness in reducing the risk of Alzheimer's in women.
  This reviewer does not advocate having fewer or no children as a consequence of this study.
Neurology 2018 Epub July 18