A 2013 Gallup poll found more than 50 percent of Americans take vitamin supplements, including 68 percent of those age 65 and older, reports the New York Times . A 2017 study published in the Journal of Nutrition found 29 percent of older adults take four or more supplements. The National Cancer Institute's Dr. Barnett Kramer notes people who take vitamins tend to be healthier, more affluent, and better educated than those who do not, and they also are less likely to die from heart disease or cancer, whether they take supplements or not. These trends can skew research results, making supplements seem more effective than they really are. Taking megadoses of vitamins and minerals, using amounts that people could never consume through food alone, could be even more problematic. "There's something appealing about taking a natural product, even if you're taking it in a way that is totally unnatural," says journalist Catherine Price. Meanwhile, the Cleveland Clinic's Dr. Eric Klein cautions that "Vitamins are not inert. They are biologically active agents. We have to think of them in the same way as drugs. If you take too high a dose of them, they cause side effects."

The George G. Glenner Alzheimer's Family Centers has teamed with Seqster to provide access to its health data platform in order to improve the Glenner Centers' care coordination and decision-making, reports Healthcare IT News . The platform allows individuals to aggregate and control all of their available health information, including electronic health record, wearables, ancestry, and genomics data. The idea is to enable participants and their families to better navigate healthcare treatment and share valuable personal and family health data with providers and researchers. The platform connects with more than 1,000 healthcare provider organizations made up of more than 2,000 hospitals and clinics across the United States. Users employ the platform by connecting via a website or mobile app to healthcare organization patient portals, wearables accounts, ancestry services accounts, and genomics services accounts by picking the organization or service and then inputting account credentials. The platform pulls together the data from all the organizations and services into a single database, allowing providers, researchers, and relatives access to the information on the person with Alzheimer's. Through the platform, the Glenner Centers offer participants and families an extra benefit and service that improves how they navigate their care experience, including instantaneous access to medical record data alongside fitness, wellness, genomics, and ancestry information.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Monday issued a final Medicare Part D rule to expand access to more affordable drugs, and also outlined new opioid limits, reports Politico Pro . The drug cost revisions should lower cost-sharing for some beneficiaries and may provide some savings for taxpayers, but they will not directly affect the prices drug companies charge. The final rule for the 2019 Medicare prescription drug program mandates plans must lower maximum co-payments for biosimilar drugs for people who receive low-income subsidies. CMS says this change should save beneficiaries $10 million in 2019, without changing what plans pay for the biosimilars. The rule also allows Part D plans to immediately substitute newly released generics for brand-name drugs at the same or lower cost-sharing if they come on the market during the plan year. However, CMS will not require insurance plans to share a portion of the rebates they negotiate with drug companies directly with beneficiaries buying the drug, and beneficiaries will be permitted to receive drugs at whichever pharmacy they prefer. Furthermore, the rule implements provisions in the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 allowing Part D plans to deploy drug management programs that can limit at-risk beneficiaries' access to frequently abused drugs, including opioids and benzodiazepines. Plans can require that at-risk beneficiaries receive the drugs from only one selected provider or pharmacist. People with cancer, in hospice, those receiving end-of-life or palliative care, and those at risk for prescription drug abuse who are in drug management programs will get exemptions. In addition, health plans must limit initial opioid prescriptions for acute pain to a maximum seven-day supply.

April is National Social Security Month, whose theme this year is "See what you can do online!" writes Bob Patterson, the Acting Associate Commissioner for External Affairs for Social Security . "From estimating or managing your benefits, to requesting a replacement card, and retiring online, Social Security's online services are here to put control at your fingertips," Patterson says. "For more than 80 years, Social Security has transformed to meet the changing needs of our customers. Today, you can apply for retirement, disability, and Medicare benefits online, find answers to more than 200 of your most frequently asked questions, and much more." Patterson says the agency wants organizations to leverage its social media toolkit and accompanying high-resolution images to educate their members and constituents during the month of April.

The Inniswood Village senior living community in Westerville, Ohio, give its residents iPads equipped with communication and access to information everywhere (CATIE) software so they can screen visitors with two-way video calls, request maintenance using voice recordings, and check in daily with management at their apartments, reports the Columbus Dispatch . Residents also receive training on how to use CATIE, with the overarching goal being the improvement of older adults' quality of life by countering social isolation, says Inniswood Village General Manager Danielle Myers. She notes the technology is specifically designed for seniors, and says instead of requiring typing, the touchscreen device converts spoken phrases into text, which can then be sent to family, friends, or community employees. Inniswood Village Executive Director Sally Grote says CATIE also has benefited her staff, accelerating their ability to communicate with all residents. Research suggests older adults are growing much more acclimated with high-tech devices than people think, says AARP Ohio's Michelle Shirer. Feridean Commons General Manager Ron Pyle notes his community has used the CATIE program for three years, and all residents of its 40 independent-living apartments currently use it, along with 70 percent of the residents in 58 assisted-living units. "At first, there was a little skepticism about it," Pyle says. "Now, like most of us with our technology, I don't think they would know how to live without it."

The Hawaii Senate last week passed legislation to legalize physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill persons, and sent it to the governor, reports Reuters . Under the measure, terminally ill individuals would be allowed to obtain a doctor's prescription for medication to hasten their death provided two physicians agree they have no more than six months to live and are mentally competent. Those seeking life-ending medical aid also would be required to take a mental health evaluation, to present two separate requests to an attending physician, and for two witnesses to attest to the individual's wish to die. The bill is scheduled for automatic enactment on April 17 unless Gov. David Ige signs it into law before then or vetoes it. The advocacy group Compassion and Choices, which supported and campaigned for the bill, says Ige is expected to sign the bill. Six other U.S. states already have laws on the books to legalize medical aid in dying for the terminally ill. Backers have sought to broaden legalization of the practice to help end-stage cancer and other people with incurable diseases to die with less pain and suffering. Critics include certain religious groups and advocates for seniors and disabled who have argued that shady caregivers or relatives could pressure vulnerable individuals to commit suicide.

The National Labor Relations Board's (NRLB) Republican-appointed members have indicated their interest in revisiting the board's test for deciding whether firms that acquire unionized workplaces are successors prohibited from unilaterally changing employment terms, reports Reuters . In a footnote to a ruling last month, NRLB Chairman Marvin Kaplan stated his disagreement with the board precedent stipulating that employers become "perfectly clear" successors to a previous company if they express their plans to hire their predecessor's employees without clarifying that employment would reply on workers accepting new terms.

A study published in Heart that followed 479,054 participants for more than seven years found that persons reporting social isolation and loneliness had a 1.4-fold to 1.5-fold greater risk of incident acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and stroke, reports Cardiovascular Business . "However, approximately 85 percent of this excess risk was attributable to known risk factors such as obesity, smoking, low education, and pre-existing chronic illness," the researchers note. In the follow-up period, the researchers estimated that more than 12,000 participants had died, with 5,731 having AMI and 3,471 having stroke. Of those who died during follow-up, 16 percent had AMI and 24 percent had stroke. The outcomes of the follow-up ascertained that isolation and loneliness significantly elevated a person's risk of cardiovascular problems. Isolation was associated with a 43 percent higher risk of first-time AMI and a 39 percent higher risk of first-time stroke. Meanwhile, loneliness was associated with a 49 percent greater risk for first-time AMI and 36 percent for first-time stroke. Following adjustment for biological, health, and socioeconomic risk factors, isolation only raised the risk of AMI and stroke by 7 percent and 6 percent, respectively, while loneliness increased the risk of AMI and stroke by 6 percent and 4 percent, respectively. Social isolation increased an individual's chance of AMI by 25 percent and the chance of stroke by 32 percent in persons with preexisting chronic conditions.

Actor Seth Rogen and his wife Lauren Miller discuss their Alzheimer's foundation's latest annual "Hilarity for Charity" variety event, which this year will be streamed by Netflix from the Hollywood Palladium, reports USA Today . "We wanted to make this special the way we view pretty much everything: what would make us the most excited as viewers?" says Rogen. "There are a lot of Netflix comedy specials out there, so we just wanted to really try to make it unique and have a lineup that represents the people that we think are the funniest people." Miller says her mother received an early-onset Alzheimer's diagnosis 10 years ago at age 55, when stigma surrounding the disease was much higher than it is now. "People didn't talk about it in the mainstream way that some other diseases are portrayed," she notes. "And that's because there's a lot of fear around it." Among the comedians and artists slated to perform at the event are Tiffany Haddish, Michael Che, Sarah Silverman, John Mulaney, and the Muppets. Miller recalls her mother's humor was essential to offering solace after the diagnosis. "I would say my mom's sense of humor was something that stuck around for a long time," she says. "At this point, it's been four to five years since my mom has been able to communicate at all and do anything for herself. She hasn't talked or walked or cared for herself. She's a shell of who she used to be, which is the brutal reality of this disease."

A study published in JAMA Neurology has found the Montreal Parkinson Risk of Dementia Scale to be a valid predictor of development of dementia, reports Medical Xpress . The researchers conducted a multicenter study employing four Parkinson's disease cohorts with a prospective 4.4-year follow-up to gauge the predictive validity of the scale, using 717 people with Parkinson's. A total of 607 were dementia-free at baseline and followed for at least 12 months. All eight items of the scale were found to independently predict dementia development. In the high-risk group the yearly conversion rate to dementia was 14.9 percent, versus 5.8 percent and 0.6 percent in the intermediate- and low-risk groups. The overall predictive validity by the area under the receiver operator characteristic curve was 0.877 across all cohorts. Sensitivity was 77.1 percent and specificity 87.2 percent for a cut-off of 4 or higher, with positive and negative predictive values of 43.9 percent and 96.7 percent, respectively. Positive and negative likelihood ratios were 5.94 and 0.26, respectively. Correlations were observed for scale results with makers of Alzheimer's pathology and neuropsychological test results. "Future studies using head-to-head comparisons or refinement of weighting would be of interest," the researchers believe.