The coronavirus has wreaked havoc on the U.S. job market and has been especially harmful to older employees, reports KNSI-FM in Minnesota. "Among workers 50 and older, 30 percent said they had lost income due to workplace closures or having to reduce their hours," said the AARP Foundation's Emily Allen. There are more than five million workers older than 55 in retail and another one million in food service, two industries that the pandemic has severely impacted. Allen said it can take older people twice as long to find new jobs as younger workers. "It may take them a while to understand how to navigate the new job market and how to navigate how to return to the workforce, building a resume, practicing for interviews, those kinds of things," she noted. The AARP Foundation cited the Back To Work 50-plus program, designed to help older men and women craft new strategies for returning to work. "A lot of times, that may mean they just need to understand what jobs will be in demand when things open back up," Allen said. "They may have been in a certain industry for most of their career. They may need to actually think about changing industries."

Research has demonstrated that pet ownership offers numerous health benefits to older adults, including stress reduction, improved fitness, and enhanced well-being, reports News-Medical . Additional benefits like lowered cholesterol and triglyceride levels, decreased blood pressure, constant companionship, and more socialization opportunities are also provided. One study in The Gerontologist found an association between dog walking and lower body-mass index, fewer doctor visits, and higher activity levels. People who bond well with their dogs also were more likely to take longer and more regular walks, improving the emotional and physical health of both owners and pets. Furthermore, owners who walk their dogs are viewed by others as approachable and friendly. However, a study in JAMA Surgery indicated that walking dogs raises the risk of bone fractures — especially hip fractures — in older adults. The researchers suggested that older dog owners consider giving their dogs obedience training partly to avoid falls and related injuries, while smaller breeds are easier to manage.

Although much of the buzz surrounding technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality (VR) focuses on younger generations like millennials, reality paints a different picture, reports Ozy . Increasing numbers of companies are developing tech targeting baby boomers — a market that is certain to grow as the U.S. population ages. Healthcare-oriented firms like Israel-based VoiceItt and Pillo Health are attracting capital for their respective unintelligible speech translation and robotic medical assistant products, while other companies are concentrating on leisure and entertainment. One example of the latter is the Alcove VR platform, which lets users play checkers with loved ones, engage in trivia and logic games, or ride a hot-air balloon. The objective for many such businesses is to use technology to enhance needs and desires already evident in the senior community, like social connection. Stream Soar founder Justin Baker suggests that many VR providers that tout their products to younger consumers are overlooking a generation that may have a better use for them. Rendever's Tom Neummann, whose firm creates VR travel videos, says VR is "fundamentally the ability to be in another place. And for a physically constrained population it means so much more."

A study from Johns Hopkins University published in JAMA Network Open determined that the groups most vulnerable to heart disease — older adults and women — are underrepresented in randomized clinical trials for cholesterol-lowering drugs, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution . The researchers analyzed trends in the types of 485,409 individuals enrolled in 60 studies from 1990 to 2018, and the findings suggested that even recent trials do not accurately represent study populations. The portion of trial participants 65 or older rose from 32 percent from the early 1990s to 42 percent in the latest trials, but only a little more than 30 of the 60 trials reported findings for older adults. "We want to ensure that the types of patients who will be using these drugs are the ones included in the clinical trials, so that we can determine if these medications are safe and effective for the people who are prescribed them," said Professor Erin Michos at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Although we did see an improvement over the years in representation of women and older adults, that progress was rather modest. Clearly more still needs to be done to shift the balance to represent our patient demographics."

Older adults in the United States are in increasing distress from loneliness and anxiety amid the coronavirus pandemic, reports CNN . Feelings of exclusion are compounded by fears by some seniors that the government considers them expendable in the rush to reopen the country. "They're wondering if they'll be able to get the care they need," said Linda Fried, dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. "And most profoundly, they're wondering if they are going to be cast out of society." On a more positive note, resilience is a key attribute of seniors. Miami Jewish Health's Marc Agronin acknowledges that loneliness is endemic to this group, yet many seniors are "already habituated to being alone or are doing ok with contact only from staff." However, experts are concerned that continuing pandemic restrictions will worsen seniors' sense of disconnection, and amplify feelings of isolation, abandonment, and despair. Seniors who have previously suffered trauma are likely to fare worse under these circumstances. Montefiore Medical Center's Gary Kennedy suggests that loved ones and caregivers should not provide false hope, but acknowledge the situation while offering companionship and sympathy.

A study published in BMC Family Practice found that older adults rarely consult their general practitioner (GP) during times of distress because of a lack of acceptable treatments, reports News-Medical . The researchers interviewed older adults who self-identified as distressed and determined that various forms of loss added to their distress, like bereavement or loss of physical mobility. Older adults make active attempts to improve their mood by pursuing independent activities, seeking social support, or attending community groups and church. Yet only a few participants sought out GPs. A key factor for eventually engaging with a GP could be persistent mood problems. The study suggested that GPs could discuss the underlying causes of this suffering and provide information about various management options. Examples of information include how the individual may self-manage their mood, use of social prescription by sign-posting older people to local third-sector services, and the potential application of medication or talking therapies.

New research published in Aging and Social Policy is urging more support for older adults in community settings with respiratory illnesses against COVID-19, a population that constitutes some 7 million Americans, reports Medical Xpress . The authors warn that current methods in the United States fail to provide sufficient protection for this demographic, and they outline steps to correct this oversight. Remedies include boosting coronavirus testing, particularly for older adults with known respiratory issues; performing assessments to define those at highest risk and ensure that appropriate precautions are followed; conducting social support via scheduled check-ins to guarantee meaningful connection; fulfilling basic needs like food and medicine; and safeguarding home care workers by ensuring the availability of correct personal protective equipment. "Policymakers, providers, and other stakeholders and advocates should take note of the concrete recommendations put forward to keep this category of the population healthy in order to help ensure their safety," advises University of Massachusetts Boston Professor Marc Cohen. "The multi-prong approach that we are advocating here should help to ameliorate these concerns and mitigate further risk. It is incumbent on us to work together with urgency."

The LIFTMOR-M study published in Bone found that high-intensity exercise regimens can strengthen bone in older men, reports Medscape . The regimen, which has demonstrated improved bone density and performance in women, incorporates barbell-based weightlifting and impact training involving jumping chin-ups. The researchers enrolled 93 men — mean age 67.1 years — with a lower than average proximal femur areal bone mineral density. Thirty-four were randomized to a high-intensity resistance and impact (HiRIT) program, 33 to supervised machine-based isometric axial compression (IAC) exercise training, and 26 were controls and self-selected to usual activities. The regimen included eight months of twice-weekly, supervised, 30-minute HiRIT sessions. At the conclusion of those eight months, there was no difference in compliance between the two intervention cohorts. Those in the HiRIT group had better medial femoral neck cortical thickness than the controls and IAC group, and they also maintained distal tibia trabecular area while the control group had a decrease. The IAC group exhibited no improvement in bone strength in any of the sites examined, though some findings suggest it may offset age-related loss in bone strength indices in the distal tibia and radius.

Hong Kong scientists claim that a new method for detecting early-stage Alzheimer's disease could spot the disorder up to 10 years before symptoms manifest, reports the South China Morning Post . The team used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to track glucose injected into the brains of mice, which indicated Alzheimer's with a slow rate of absorption and processing. In mice with Alzheimer's, the processing of glucose in the glymphatic system was substantially slower than in healthy mice. Human trials would involve subjects undergoing MRIs, then receiving glucose and being rescanned to trace the changes in the brain. The new protocol does not have any side effects, uses widely available MRI scanners, and would cost half as much as positron emission tomography scans. "If any test can allow the detection 10 to 20 years before, we could intervene much earlier, which would make a huge difference in the efficacy of therapy," said City University of Hong Kong Professor Kannie Chan Wai-yan.

A study from researchers at Melbourne's Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute suggests that Australians with type 2 diabetes have a threefold elevated risk for deadly cancer and a 60 percent higher risk for dementia than the general populace, reports the Sydney Morning Herald . The investigators reviewed the health outcomes of more than two million people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Those individuals were up to three times more likely to develop pancreatic cancer and twice as likely to develop liver or endometrial cancer, and also had a 50 percent greater chance of being diagnosed with bowel cancer and a 20 percent greater risk of breast cancer. The researchers suspect this hazard could be linked to the role of insulin, or possibly to elevated sugar levels. Meanwhile, the underlying processes of diabetes development are believed to damage small blood vessels in the brain, a likely contributor toward vascular dementia. "One of the causes of dementia are strokes or many small strokes, which are never seen as individual strokes," said Baker Institute Professor Jonathan Shaw. "Strokes are far more common in people with diabetes, just like heart attacks."