Stroke risk factors may signal faster cognitive decline in elderly
Older Americans with the highest risk of stroke, but those who have never suffered a stroke, also have the highest rate of cognitive decline, researchers reported at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2008.
“Everyone knows that people lose some cognitive function as they age,” said George Howard, Dr.P.H., the principal investigator of the ongoing study. “We found that people at high risk of stroke, decline twice as fast as those persons considered at low-risk.”
Howard and his colleagues correlated the stroke risks of 17,000-plus study participants with the results from a simple cognitive test and found the stroke risk scores tracked closely with the average age-, race-, and gender-adjusted annual cognitive decline.
Anesthesia Study Targets Risk Factors in Obese Children
In the first large-scale study of its kind, investigators from the University of Michigan have discovered that obese children, when compared to normal weight children, have a significantly higher prevalence of pre-existing medical conditions and subsequently experience more problems during and after surgery.
The study, authored by Alan R. Tait, Ph.D., and colleagues, evaluated 2,025 children, ages 2 to 18 years, and offers important insight into the effects of obesity on respiratory problems in children undergoing non-cardiac surgery.
Dr. Tait and his research group found that obese children came to surgery with much higher rates of asthma, hypertension, sleep apnea and diabetes.
