Two Australian studies suggest ways that women can prevent or delay the onset of dementia earlier, reports Futurity . One study , published in Brain Imaging and Behavior , determined a woman's volume of gray matter at the age of 60 predicts her memory performance at 70. Another study in the same publication found women with normal levels of "good" cholesterol, HDL, had less white matter damage in their brain 10 years later when they underwent late-life brain magnetic resonance imaging scans and cognitive evaluations. "Taken together, these findings show there are useful neuroimaging biomarkers for the prediction of cognitive decline in healthy older women," says University of Melbourne Professor Cassandra Szoeke. She notes the inclusion of brain scanning "meant we could measure women's brain pathology alongside cognition over decades, and being able to 'see' the impact of changes in the living brain is a huge leap forward in understanding how dementia develops." Szoeke emphasizes the need for a healthy lifestyle, especially daily physical activity. "Healthy blood vessels reduce our risk of cognitive decline and disease," she says. "This aligns with our knowledge that regular physical activity, normal blood pressure, and maintaining normal levels of HDL cholesterol are all associated with better cognition."

With the midterm election drawing near and voters going to the polls to decide between candidates, President Trump and other members of the Republican Party are contending that Democrats' support for expanding Medicare would threaten the viability of the program for beneficiaries, reports NPR . "The Democrats' plan means that after a life of hard work and sacrifice, seniors would no longer be able to depend on the benefits they were promised," President Trump wrote in a recent guest column for USA Today . Numerous GOP candidates have made similar statements that have drawn the ire of fact checkers like Linda Blumberg of the Urban Institute. She recently told PolitiFact that suggesting Medicare-for-all would disrupt current beneficiaries' coverage is a "horrible mischaracterization of the proposal," while the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler noted that a leading proposal "in theory would expand benefits for seniors." Harvard University Professor Robert Blendon says the Republicans' renewed focus on Medicare is predicated on the fact that "people over 60 are very high-turnout voters," especially in non-presidential election years.

Two studies presented at the 122nd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology demonstrate that a new, non-invasive imaging device can spot signs of Alzheimer's in a matter of seconds, reports ScienceDaily . The optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) technique enables doctors to visualize the smallest veins in the back of the eye, including the red blood cells moving through the retina. Duke University researchers used OCTA to compare the retinas of persons with Alzheimer's with those of people with mild cognitive impairment, as well as healthy subjects. The Alzheimer's group exhibited loss of small retinal blood vessels at the back of the eye as well as a thinner retinal layer. Another team examined 400 people with a family history of Alzheimer's, but who were themselves asymptomatic. Their retina and brain scans were compared to those who had no family history of Alzheimer's. The inner layer of the retina was found to be thinner in people with a family history, while the brain scan showed that their hippocampus had already started to contract. Both of these factors were associated with scoring worse on a cognitive function test.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine argues against having healthy, older people start taking low-dose aspirin daily, reports KERA News . The investigators followed some 20,000 people in Australia and the United States, most of whom were older than 70. The participants took 100 milligrams of low-dose aspirin, or a placebo, each day for an average of 4.7 years. The aspirin did not reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease, and it also elevated their rates of bleeding and mortality. A shocking finding was that aspirin did not benefit any of the participants for primary prevention of heart attack or stroke. "In my particular practice, if someone has been on low-dose aspirin for many years and they haven't had any issues with bleeding or other issue, I probably will not stop it," says Neeraj Badhey with Texas Health Hurst-Euless-Bedford. "But I may not start people on it going forward." The study results are inapplicable to people who have had a heart attack. "If you've had a heart attack or stroke in the past, aspirin is very important to prevent recurrence," states Badhey.

Business leaders often see the need for employee training when it becomes apparent that their decision-making processes have failed to clarify which leaders and groups own which decisions, reports the Harvard Business Review . Other factors indicating the same include narrowly distributed authority concentrated at the top of the organization, a lack of quantifiable expectations that employees make decisions, and an absence of technologies to rapidly pass information to those who need it to make decisions. However, such systemic issues make it unlikely that a training program will have a sustainable outcome. There are three conditions required to ensure the effectiveness of a workplace training solution: the deployment of internal systems to support newly desired behavior, commitment to change, and the solution's direct alignment with strategic priorities. Businesses intending to invest large sums into training must be confident that it is meeting a strategic learning need. They also must be sure their organization can and will sustain new skills and knowledge by addressing the broader issues that may threaten their success.

York College Professor Ann Norwich writes in the Washington Post that the U.S. healthcare system is "grossly unprepared" for the massive numbers of people with dementia expected in coming decades. The Alzheimer's Association predicts 14 million Americans older than 65 will develop the disease by 2050. Norwich says many people have expressed a desire for a better plan that lets them stay at home and receive non-invasive treatments. "Unfortunately, many of these persons have not been given the formal diagnosis of Alzheimer's or another form of dementia," she writes. Norwich cites figures that early diagnosis of dementia could save $7.9 trillion in medical costs over multiple years and offer personalized care that includes access to medical trials, drugs to slow disease progression, active management of comorbid conditions, and the opportunity to engage in goal planning for the future. She points to the stigma surrounding dementia as a key factor in why so few people are willing to opt for early diagnosis. "I challenge all of us who are involved in diagnosing and treating people to follow the lead of the many ... who have accepted their disease with grace," Norwich urges. "Let's erase the fear surrounding this disease and lead our recipients to a timely diagnosis. It's a chance we can't afford to miss."

Massachusetts General Hospital neurobiologist Robert Moir has struggled with disagreement from the scientific community concerning his theory of a microbial cause for Alzheimer's, reports STAT . His application for a five-year National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant, based on research providing strong data for the notion that beta-amyloid might be a response to microbes in the brain, was repeatedly thwarted by inconsistent assessment of his work. Critics say his difficulty reflects the trend of many scientists in the NIH "study sections" that evaluate grant applications, and those who check submitted papers for journals, fiercely rejecting any alternatives to prevailing explanations. After two years of failed attempts at publishing his findings, Moir's work was accepted and published in 2016 in Science Translational Medicine . Editors described the findings as a "rehabilitation of an amyloid bad boy" which identified "inflammatory pathways as potential new drug targets for treating" Alzheimer's. This, however, has not cleared Moir's path toward an NIH grant. If he and other researchers are correct that beta-amyloid is an antimicrobial, significantly different therapeutic measures than amyloid-destroying treatments may need to be developed.

A CB Insights report indicates that funding for aging and longevity startups, currently valued at $850 million, has far exceeded previous years, according to Business Insider . This coincides with new scientific insights into human aging and possible ways of targeting different aspects of this process to retard the progression of certain diseases. Among the firms receiving record amounts of venture capital this year is Samumed, which raised $438 million in its latest funding round. Samumed aims to use stem cells to regenerate hair, skin, bones, and joints. Meanwhile, the Longevity Fund is investing in Mayo Clinic spinoff Unity Biotechnology, which in June began human trials of senolytics medications designed to eradicate pre-cancerous cells that accrue in aged and damaged tissue. Novartis and Celgene also are investing in aging research, with the former having recently conducted a study on a drug similar to rapamycin, which caused subjects' rate of respiratory infections to decline by more than 65 percent during winter cold and flu season. Medications based on this study are being developed by Novartis' resTORbio spinoff. Celgene's Celularity spinoff, meanwhile, raised $250 million in February. It plans to use placental stem cells to promote longevity and treat conditions such as cancer and autoimmune disease.

A University of Michigan (U-M) study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found older male doctors in the South and rural western states are prescribing the most benzodiazepines and opioids to seniors, most of whom are less educated and from areas with lower incomes and at higher risk for suicide, reports Forbes . Alabama, Tennessee, West Virginia, Florida, and Louisiana were the states with the highest prescribing levels. Certain counties in the Deep South and rural western states had three times the level of sedative prescribing as those with the lowest levels. Some primary care physicians prescribed sedatives at a rate more than six times that of their peers, and top prescribers also tended to be high-intensity opioid prescribers. "Taken all together, our findings suggest that primary care providers may be prescribing benzodiazepines to medicate distress," says U-M-Ann Arbor's Donovan Maust. "And since these drugs increase major health risks, especially when taken with opioid painkillers, it's quite possible that benzodiazepine prescribing may contribute to the shortened life expectancies that others have observed in residents of these areas." Maust notes in the single year studied, the 122,054 primary care providers included prescribed 728 million days' worth of benzodiazepines to their customers, at a combined cost of $200 million. High sedative prescription intensity also was tied to more days of poor mental health, a higher proportion of disability-eligible Medicare beneficiaries, and a higher suicide rate at the county level.

A study from Burning Glass Technologies found college graduates who studied homeland security and law enforcement had a 65 percent likelihood of being underemployed in their first job out of school, reports the Wall Street Journal . Graduates with degrees in psychology and biology had chances of 54 percent and 51 percent, respectively, of working jobs that require no college degrees. Burning Glass examined real-time job postings and more than four million resumes from people who graduated college between 2000 and 2017, and an average of 43 percent of graduates are underemployed in their first job. About 66 percent of those are still in jobs that do not require college degrees five years later. "When we are producing graduates who wind up in jobs that don't require college degrees, that's a failure to launch for the student and a failure to deliver for the program," said Burning Glass CEO Matt Sigelman. Somewhat surprising, graduates of liberal arts fields such as philosophy, ethnic and gender studies, history, and English all have a better-than-even chance of getting jobs that are aligned with their educational attainment. Research from Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce adds credibility to the Burning Glass study, with the finding that job prospects and earnings vary widely by college major.