Link found between chronic inflammation and Alzheimer's gene risk

A pilot study involving 22 breast cancer patients currently receiving chemotherapy (mean age 54), has found that those with higher levels of inflammatory biomarkers did significantly worse on tests for short-term visual memory.

Unplanned hospitalizations accelerate cognitive decline in older adults

Data from the Rush Memory and Aging Project has found that emergency and urgent hospitalizations are associated with an increased rate of cognitive decline in older adults.

A study involving 65 older adults (average age 66), of whom 35 had type 2 diabetes, has found that after two years, those with diabetes had decreases in their ability to regulate blood flow in the brain, and a reduced ability to regulate blood flow was associated with lower cognitive scores.

As we all know, people are living longer and obesity is at appalling levels. For both these (completely separate!) reasons, we expect to see growing rates of dementia. A new analysis using data from the long-running Framingham Heart Study offers some hope to individuals, however.

Growing research has implicated infections as a factor in age-related cognitive decline, but these have been cross-sectional (comparing different individuals, who will have a number of other, possibly confounding, attributes).

A six-week study involving 619 cancer patients has found that those who took part in a simple home-based exercise program significantly reduced their cognitive impairment ('chemo-brain').

A mouse study has found that obese mice had high levels of interleukin 1 in both their blood and their brains, and this was associated with: