MarketWatch reports that small assisted living communities are an increasingly popular choice, especially amid worries about resident health and safety during the current pandemic. Residential Assisted Living Academy founder Gene Guarino is a major force in the movement to promote such options. He says residents of senior residential communities "may not have the same access to some larger group activities but, now more than ever, people are realizing that a smaller home environment may be a safer and more convenient option." Such communities, compared to larger ones, can offer a more intimate, homelike setting; a deeper relationship with caregivers; a higher level of staffing with faster response times; easier control of viruses and accommodation of visits from family members; and top-quality meals.

A preclinical study in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease describes a novel vaccine for Alzheimer's disease, which uses the body's own immune cells to destroy beta-amyloid, reports Medical News Today . The research indicated effective antibody production and memory improvements in mice given the vaccine. The compound uses dendritic cells, which communicate with other immune cells to direct immune response. The dendritic cells are impregnated with a modified version of beta-amyloid so that the body can detect and destroy the actual protein. "Because we use dendritic cells to generate antibodies, this vaccine can coordinate both innate and acquired immunity to potentially overcome age-related impairments of the immune system," said the University of South Florida Health's Chuanhai Cao. In addition to the antibody response, the mice administered the vaccine exhibited symptom improvements — performing similarly to healthy mice in memory tests, for example. The vaccine also did not induce inflammation, a major concern when developing a vaccine and the key reason why researchers had to halt using a previous vaccine.

New research in the Journal of Aging and Health suggests older couples can expect their health to decline due to negative self-perceptions about aging, reports Medical Xpress . The researchers found health effects differ by gender among senior couples: a husband's self-perceptions about aging are associated with the wife's depressive symptoms, whereas the wife's perspectives correspond with her husband's physical disability, functional limits, and chronic diseases. Overall, negative aging beliefs among senior couples can become a self-fulfilling prophecy that impacts psychological, cognitive, and behavioral processes. Women harboring less negative self-perceptions about aging are more likely to adopt health-promotion behavior themselves, and encourage their husbands to get healthcare and comply with medical treatment. Meanwhile, women who hold higher negative self-perceptions about aging are less likely to be proactive in terms of healthcare for themselves and their spouses. Yet a wife's depressive symptoms — rather than physical health — are more reactive to her husband's negative views on aging.

A study published in Arthritis Care & Research significantly associated severe periodontitis with osteoarthritis (OA) in middle-aged and older individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2D), reports Rheumatology Advisor . The implication is that oral inflammation in people with periodontitis may be partially involved in the pathogenesis of OA, especially among those with T2D. The researchers analyzed data from the 2008 to 2015 cross-sectional Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination survey, involving 3,527 individuals age 50 or older. Those with T2D were more likely to have OA as the severity of their periodontitis rose, yet this connection was not seen among individuals without T2D. The researchers determined that additional research was necessary to determine the precise mechanism that links periodontitis to OA.

STAT reports that U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists have indicated that Biogen's Alzheimer's disease drug aducanumab has sufficient safety and efficacy for human use. The reviewers wrote that Biogen's data from a large clinical trial was "robust and exceptionally persuasive," while a second study, although finding no significant benefit, agreed with Biogen that the data generally supports the medication's effects. The FDA review appeared to address two key issues — the differing outcomes between its two pivotal studies, and the possibility that a common side effect informed patients whether they were administered treatment or placebo. The side effect, a swelling of the brain called ARIA, was cited by outside experts as creating a bias in the study. However, the FDA reviewers said analysis of the data did not suggest that this effect biased the trial. Yet reviewer Tristan Massie argued that the one positive trial of aducanumab cannot overtake the negative one, concluding that "there is no compelling, substantial evidence of treatment effect or disease slowing and that another study is needed to confirm or deny the positive study and the negative study."

A recently published Voya Financial survey indicates that the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted retirement plans for most Americans, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution . According to the poll, 54 percent of working Americans currently have plans to work in retirement, with 40 percent doing so to have security against unexpected costs and market volatility. The pandemic's influence on retirement also extends from baby boomers to millennials. In fact, 59 percent of boomers plan to work in retirement due to the pandemic. "We're in a time period where the definition of retirement is evolving and will continue to evolve as a result of COVID-19," explained Voya Financial's Charlie Nelson. "However, retirement for many individuals means more than just financial needs and could include concerns of health, but sometimes it means a desire for a mental well-being." Despite rampant financial uncertainty, many respondents continue to prioritize retirement savings. Fifty-five percent prefer to have enough to last through retirement rather than paying off debts completely.

Approximately 20 percent of U.S. adults reported experiencing chronic pain last year, according to new CDC data cited by STAT News. Those most likely to report such high-impact pain include senior adults and women. Additionally, individuals in rural areas were more likely to report pain versus urban dwellers. In the three months before the survey was conducted, 7.5 percent said they experienced chronic pain that had often limited their work or other daily activities.

The Sumter County Sheriff's Office in Florida is launching a new program to help families keep track of relatives with dementia or Alzheimer's, reports WESH NewsChannel 2 . "Our goal is to assist families with being able to safely locate their loved ones . . . who may be prone to wandering behavior," said Sheriff's Office victim advocate Sharon Donocourt. The Dementia Recovery, Education, and Management program is funded by the Bureau of Justice Administration through a federal grant, and offered to Sumter County residents at no charge. Participants can opt for a global positioning system (GPS)-enabled watch or a smaller GPS device that can be affixed to clothing. Both devices feature a smartphone application that lets families or caretakers monitor loved ones' whereabouts. The plan is to reduce the number of people who wander from a safe location and need law enforcement to find them and return them home. "They can call still," said Donocourt. "Our dispatch will access an Internet-based portal where we can locate the individual and we can just send deputies out to their exact location."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an advisory to clinical labs and healthcare providers about the potential for COVID-19 antigen tests from Abbott, BD, and Quidel to produce false positives after receiving reports from nursing communities and other settings, reports MedTech Dive . The alert urges users to follow the instructions, warning that false results can come from improper storage and reading them at the wrong time. The agency added that false positives could be an unavoidable outcome of using tests with specificities below 100 percent; if a test with 98 percent specificity is used to screen a population in which 10 percent of people are infected, two out of every 10 positive results will be false. The alert follows a New York Times report on a University of Arizona study citing concerns about the ability of a Quidel rapid antigen test to detect asymptomatic cases, which produced more false positives than positives verified by PCR tests.

A Danish study in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports finds that heavy physical labor can raise the risk of dementia, reports Big Think . The researchers analyzed 50 years' worth of data from some 5,000 Danish men, and those who reported working physically demanding jobs developed dementia 55 percent more often than their peers working desk jobs. This accounts for differences in education, socioeconomic levels, drinking habits, and other variables that could compound memory loss. Jobs involving some physical activity but which were less strenuous entailed less risk. The researchers suspect that the operating mechanism may dovetail with the potentially negative impact of occupational physical activity on the cardiovascular system. Moreover, among Danes, men working in physically intensive occupations are more likely to smoke, drink, weigh too much, remain unmarried, and end up in lower socioeconomic levels — all of which can contribute to memory loss. The study also reconfirms earlier findings suggesting that light exercise lowers the odds of dementia somewhat.