The AP (7/16, Marchione) reports that the dementia rate “is falling in the United States and some other rich countries.” What’s more, the onset of dementia, including Alzheimer’s, appears to be happening later in life. Investigators came to both conclusions after analyzing data from the “federally funded Framingham study” that “tracked new dementia cases among several thousand people 60 and older in five-year periods starting in 1978, 1989, 1996 and 2006.”

Dallas Anderson, chief of epidemiology at the National Institute on Aging, said, “For those who get the disease, it may come later in life, which is a good thing.”

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— “,” Marilynn Marchione, Associated Press, July 15, 2014.

HealthDay (7/15, Doheny) reports that research presented at an international meeting of the Alzheimer’s Association suggests that “for certain seniors, widowhood may…delay dementia.” The study started with approximately “3,800 married men and women starting to show some brain decline.” Investigators found that participants “who were widowed progressed to dementia at age 92 roughly, while those who didn’t lose a spouse were demented by age 83 – nearly a 10-year difference.”

Related Links:

— “Widowhood May Delay Dementia in Some Seniors, Study Finds,” Kathleen Doheny, HealthDay, July 14, 2014.

In continuing coverage, the New York Times (7/2, Reynolds) “Well” blog reports that according to a study (7/2) published in the May issue of the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, “exercise may help to keep the brain robust in people who have an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.” For the study, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic “recruited almost 100 older men and women, aged 65 to 89, many of whom had a family history of Alzheimer’s disease.”

All participants underwent brain scans before and after the study. Researchers found that “the brains of physically active volunteers at high risk for Alzheimer’s disease looked just like the brains of people at much lower risk for the disease.”

Related Links:

— “Can Exercise Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk?,” Gretchen Reynolds, New York Times, July 2, 2014.

HealthDay (7/10, Preidt) reports that according to a study published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, “muscle, bone and joint injuries, as well as mental health disorders, are the main reasons why US soldiers who served in Iraq left the military.” For the study, investigators tracked some “4,100 Army soldiers, aged 18 to 52, from the start of a 15-month deployment in Iraq in 2006 until the end of four years after their return to the” US.

Researchers found that “among those who were unable to return to a military career after the deployment, 60 percent had muscle, bone or joint injuries and nearly half had mental health conditions.” The most common conditions cited for leaving included traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder, and low back pain.

Related Links:

— “Muscle and Bone Injuries, Mental Disorders Plagued U.S. Iraq War Vets,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, July 9, 2014.

The AP (7/10, Tanner) reports that according to a study published July 9 in JAMA Psychiatry, adverse reactions to psychiatric medications result in some 90,000 emergency department “visits each year by US adults, with anti-anxiety medicines and sedatives among the most common culprits.” After analyzing “2009-2011 medical records from 63 hospitals that participate in a nationally representative government surveillance project,” researchers found that the majority of ED “visits were for troublesome side effects or accidental overdoses and almost 1 in 5 resulted in hospitalization.”

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— “STUDY: PSYCH DRUG ER TRIPS APPROACH 90,000 A YEAR,” Lindsay Tanner, Associated Press, July 9, 2014.

Medscape (7/8, Brauser) reports that according to the results of a 712-patient study recently presented at the International Congress of the Royal College of Psychiatrists 2014, “excessive exercising, or so-called ‘exercise addiction,’ is a real problem and often occurs within the context of eating disorders.” The study also revealed that patients with an eating disorder “had significantly higher scores in weight control exercise, lack of enjoyment, exercise rigidity, and avoidance behaviors than those without an” eating disorder.

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— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

The Boston Globe (7/8, Kotz) “Daily Dose” blog reports that 49 percent “of Americans experienced an earth-shattering, stressful event last year that completely altered their lives.” Approximately “half of the time, these events were related to a major health problem, either their own or a loved one’s that may have ended in death,” according to the results “a new survey [pdf] of more than 2,500 Americans released Monday by the Harvard School of Public Health, National Public Radio, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.”

The Huffington Post (7/8, Holmes) reports that other common sources of stress for people are “followed by work problems (13 percent) and life changes (9 percent),” the survey revealed. Investigators also “discovered that many who experienced large amounts of stress in the last month turned to healthy activities like spending time with loved ones, meditating and eating well in order to deal with their worries.”

Related Links:

— “Half of Americans under high stress over past year, survey says,” Deborah Kotz, The Boston Globe, July 7, 2014.

Reuters (7/8, Kelland) reports that according to a study published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, researchers in the UK have completed identification of 10 blood proteins predictive of the onset of Alzheimer’s disease in people who have mild cognitive impairment (MCI) with a little less than 90% accuracy.

Reuters notes that pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lilly, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson are using different approaches to develop treatments to stop progression of the disease. However, over the past decade and a half more than 100 experimental drugs have failed in trial, which one of the authors of the study said could be attributed to conducting drug trials at too late a stage.

Related Links:

— “Study paves the way for a blood test to predict Alzheimer’s,” Kate Kelland, Reuters, July 7, 2014.

The McClatchy-Tribune News Service (7/6) reported that according to a study published recently in the journal Biological Psychiatry, researchers have “shown that chronic stress of poverty, neglect and physical abuse in early life may shrink the parts of a child’s developing brain responsible for memory, learning and processing emotion.”

The two parts of the brain involved are the hippocampus and the amygdala. The study involved 128 12-year-olds, all of whom underwent magnetic resonance imaging scans.

Related Links:

— “Researchers: Early stress from poverty hurts brain development,” McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Detroit Free Press, July 6, 2014.