By: Sara Miller

A random observation by an Israeli cognitive neurologist about the demographics of Jews with early onset of Alzheimer’s disease has led to a genetic study with the potential to shake up how we diagnose and treat patients suffering from this condition.

The World Health Organization says Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia, with around 40 million sufferers worldwide in 2023. There is no cure for or even a universally accepted cause of the disease, despite it being first diagnosed more than a century ago.

In 2017, Dr. Amir Glik, the director of Cognitive Neurology at Beilinson Hospital, realized that of his Jewish patients experiencing cognitive decline, well over half were Sephardi Jews – those who originate from Spain and Portugal in Southern Europe and later North Africa and the Middle East.

“I started asking myself, why does it happen?” Glik tells NoCamels. “Whether my feeling is something that I can prove with statistical methods or is it just a feeling.”

Glik and his team then began to go through hundreds of patient files at the hospital’s cognitive neurology clinic, some dating back years, to see whether there were statistics to back up this intuition.

“After doing the work, examining hundreds of patients, we saw that this is correct,” Glik says.

What they found was that 64 percent of the Jewish patients with early onset dementia were Sephardi, as compared to 36 percent Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern and Northern Europe.

The team then went to Israel’s Health Ministry and other government bodies to acquire annually updated data, which also bore out the trend that they had uncovered at Beilinson.

Glik stresses that the study relates to people aged around 60, who are below the average age for Alzheimer’s diagnosis but older than those who have genetic inclination to develop the disease in their 40s.

According to Glik, Israel’s relatively homogeneous population makes it easier to identify genetic trends within certain ethnic groups and then expand any findings out to more diverse communities.

“The idea when you do a genetic study is to take a population that is a closed population,” he says. “[And] people who studied genetics said that Israel is heaven from a genetical standpoint.”

Glik explains that in a closed population such as Israel, less diversity means there will be a higher percentage of the population with certain genetic risk factors, making them easier to locate.

“In order to find a genetic risk factor in a homogenic population like the Ashkenazi Jews, or like the [Sephardi] Jews, you need a much lower number of participants in order to find the genetic risk factors,” he says.

He gives the example of the Israeli research that discovered that Ashkenazi Jewish women are more genetically disposed to developing breast cancer. This is because one in every 40 Ashkenazi Jewish women has a mutation of the BRCA gene, something which increases the risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer at a young age. Conversely, only one in every 140 Sephardi Jewish women has the gene mutation.

Once identified, Glik says, these risk factors can then be examined in more heterogenic populations such as in the United States or Europe.

Glik maintains that in the past few years there has been a subtle “revolution” going on in the study of Alzheimer’s disease, unbeknown to most people.

He highlights the introduction of two new drugs to “clean” the build up of the Amyloid beta protein in the brain, which is thought to be one of the primary factors in the development of Alzheimer’s. A third new drug is expected to receive approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the summer.

“What happened in psychiatry 20, 30 years ago is now happening in Alzheimer’s disease” Glik says.

Indeed, the Beilinson study has drawn attention from the US government. Its National Institute of Health has provided $13 million to expand Glik’s genetic research into a joint study with Boston University School of Medicine and three other Israeli medical centers.

The hope is that this will help advance early detection, treatment and care for sufferers of the disease.

“We want to know what are the mechanisms that cause Alzheimer’s disease,” Glik says.

“If we know the genes that are risk factors for the disease, then we can learn about the mechanisms of the disease and maybe find a drug that can interfere in this mechanism, and postpone disease development. That’s the aim.”

          (NoCamels.com)

After three days of electrical stimulation, 47 percent of patients reported improvements in loudness, and 36 percent reported improvement in severity.

By: Megan Redshaw, J.D.

A therapeutic, noninvasive therapy may bring relief to millions of Americans suffering from tinnitus, a debilitating condition with no approved pharmacological treatment or cure.

In a proof-of-concept study recently published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, researchers found that electrical stimulation through the ear canal decreased loudness and tinnitus-induced distress in just three days, especially for women and those with tinnitus affecting both ears.

Using an electrode placed in the ear, 66 patients underwent 10 minutes of electrical stimulation for three days while researchers monitored how it affected their symptoms. They analyzed several factors, including the frequency of the stimulation current, the sequence of applying different currents, the severity of tinnitus at admission, whether tinnitus affected one or both ears, sex, and age of the patients.

Of the 66 patients, 47 percent experienced a statistically significant reduction in tinnitus loudness, and 36 percent reported improvements in symptom severity. Moreover, women reported reduced tinnitus loudness immediately after the first ear stimulation session and after subsequent sessions, whereas men didn’t respond positively until after the second and third sessions. The researchers said gender differences in sensory reactivity could explain why women responded sooner and more positively, as women are more sensitive to electrical stimulation.

In patients with tinnitus affecting both ears, symptoms responded more favorably to earlier treatments than those with tinnitus affecting only one ear. Age had no affect on the success of the treatment.

Finally, the study showed that patients with compensated/habituated tinnitus responded differently to electrical stimulation than those with decompensated/unhabituated tinnitus.

According to a paper published in Brain and Behavior, decompensated/unhabituated tinnitus is a “complex psychosomatic process” in which a person experiences considerable suffering from tinnitus and does not become accustomed to it. This sometimes leads to psychological symptoms such as difficulty falling asleep, insomnia, aggression, difficulty concentrating, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Those with compensated/habituated tinnitus hear phantom sounds but become accustomed to them.

The researchers found that patients with both types of tinnitus experienced “significantly reduced loudness” after the second and third electrical stimulation sessions, but only those with compensated/habituated tinnitus experienced a significant reduction in distress after three days of treatment.

What Is Tinnitus?

Tinnitus is a perception of sound without an external source, meaning it’s a sound other people cannot hear. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders estimates that 10 to 25 percent of U.S. adults experience some form of tinnitus—making it one of the country’s most common health conditions.

Although it is commonly described as “ringing in the ears,” people with tinnitus may hear roaring, whooshing, hissing, humming, or buzzing in one ear or both, and the noise can be soft or loud, low- or high-pitched, and sporadic or continuously present. These phantom sounds aren’t actually caused by the ear, but are generated by the part of the brain that processes sound called the auditory cortex.

Tinnitus symptoms can resolve suddenly or become chronic, which may lead to other symptoms such as sleep deprivation, difficulty concentrating, psychological distress, and depression.

Some research suggests tinnitus is caused by damage to the inner ear that changes the signals carried by the nerves to the auditory cortex, while other evidence suggests that abnormal interactions between the auditory cortex and neural circuits could contribute to the condition.

Tinnitus can also be caused by other conditions such as Ménière’s disease, diabetes, autoimmune conditions, heavy metal toxicity, tumors, jaw problems, noise exposure, hearing loss, and medications, including nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen and aspirin, certain antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs, antidepressants, and vaccinations.

For example, according to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, more than 26,000 people have reported developing tinnitus after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.

Dr. Gregory Poland, director of Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group and editor-in-chief of the journal Vaccine, developed “unrelenting” tinnitus after receiving his second dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine in early 2021 and says it feels like someone “suddenly blew a dog whistle” in his ear.

In an interview with MedPage Today, Dr. Poland said he believes tens of thousands of people in the United States alone and potentially millions worldwide are struggling with the condition and that more needs to be done to determine the cause and the relief.

“What has been heartbreaking about this, as a seasoned physician, are the emails I get from people that this has affected their life so badly, they have told me they are going to take their own life,” Dr. Poland said.

Other Potential Treatments for Tinnitus

In addition to electrical stimulation, other therapeutic treatments may benefit those experiencing tinnitus, including infrared light therapy, Korean red ginseng, ginkgo biloba, zinc, melatonin, and dietary therapy.

In addition, numerous studies have found that cochlear implants may effectively reduce tinnitus. A cochlear implant is a small electronic device that provides a “sense of sound” to those who cannot hear or are hard of hearing. However, it does not restore hearing.

The authors of the proof-of-concept study suggest their research could be used to develop an extracochlear implant for tinnitus patients that could be used regardless of the degree of hearing loss.

Study Limitations

Although the study may provide hope for people experiencing tinnitus, the authors said their research has several limitations: First, the sample size was relatively small due to limited patient access during the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, there was no control group. Finally, there was insufficient audiometric information on matched tinnitus loudness and frequency and on psychological conditions that could affect the treatments.

The authors said they do not know how long the therapy’s benefits last, but their research could help future studies or be used to create a blueprint for a device that could help tinnitus patients in the near future.

(TheEpochTimes.com)

By: Geoff Mulvihill

Settlement money to help stem the decades-long opioid addiction and overdose epidemic is rolling out to small towns and big cities across the U.S., but advocates worry that chunks of it may be used in ways that don’t make a dent in the crisis.

As state and local governments navigate how to use the money, advocates say local governments may not have the bandwidth to take the right steps to identify their communities’ needs and direct their funding shares to projects that use proven methods to prevent deaths.

Opioids have been linked to about 800,000 deaths in the U.S. since 1999, including more than 80,000 annually in recent years, with most of those involving illicitly produced fentanyl.

Drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies have been involved in more than 100 settlements of opioid-related lawsuits with state, local and Native American tribal governments over the past decade.

The deals, some not yet finalized, could be worth a total of more than $50 billion over nearly two decades and also come with requirements for better monitoring of prescriptions and making company documents public.

States alone fought the tobacco industry in the 1990s and they used only a sliver of the money from the resulting settlements on tobacco-related efforts.

“We don’t want to be 10 years down the road and say, ‘After we screwed up tobacco, we trusted small government with opioids — and we did even worse,’” said Paul Farrell, Jr., one of the lead lawyers representing local governments in the opioid suits.

He notes that with settlement money rolling out for at least 14 more years, there’s time for towns to use it appropriately, and resources to help.

The goal, experts say, is to help those who are taking opioids to get treatment, to make it less likely people who use drugs will overdose and to create an environment for people not to take them in the first place.

For many, it’s personal.

Suzanne Harrison and her family launched a nonprofit dedicated to getting New Jersey residents access to treatment and recovery programs after her brother and Navy veteran, King Shaffer Jr., died from a fentanyl and heroin overdose in 2016, days before he was scheduled to try another treatment program.

At the time, he was staying with a sister who lived in Moorestown, New Jersey.

That town’s administration decided to hand its portion of settlement money over to Burlington County, which has used settlement funds to distribute an overdose antidote and run camps for kids affected by addiction.

“The County was in a much better position to handle this subject,” township manager Kevin Aberant emailed, noting reporting requirements and restrictions on how the money could be used.

The major opioid settlements, which include deals with Walgreen Co., CVS Health, Walmart, Johnson & Johnson and one with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma that is before the U.S. Supreme Court, require that most of the funds be used to combat the crisis.

More than half of the funds will be controlled by local governments, according to Christine Minhee, who runs the Opioid Settlement Tracker website. In the biggest agreements, states receive larger amounts by getting eligible local governments with populations over 10,000 to join the settlements.

(AP)

By: Amie Dahnke

Women who consume or use cannabis while breastfeeding are passing delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive component in the drug, on to their nursing child, according to a new study.

“Breastfeeding parents need to be aware that if they use cannabis, their infants are likely consuming cannabinoids via the milk they produce, and we do not know whether this has any effect on the developing infant,” Courtney Meehan, a biological anthropologist at Washington State University and one of the authors of the study, said in a press release.

THC Remains Present in Breastmilk

Unlike alcohol, which has a peak accumulation time in breast milk, THC remains consistently concentrated in breast milk, according to the results published in Breastfeeding Medicine.

The concentration of THC in breastmilk was relatively low according to the researchers—infants who consumed breastmilk containing THC were still ingesting around 0.07 milligrams of the compound daily. To put that amount into perspective, a typical low-dose cannabis edible product contains a much higher dose of approximately 2 mg of THC.

The research team analyzed milk donated by 20 breastfeeding mothers who frequently used cannabis. The participants all had infants younger than six months. The milk was obtained 12 hours after the breastfeeding mother’s last cannabis use and then at regular eight to 12-hour intervals afterward.

The breastmilk always had detectable amounts of THC, even when the mothers had abstained for 12 hours.

“Human milk has compounds called lipids, and cannabinoids are lipophilic, meaning they dissolve in those lipids,” Ms. Meehan said. “This may mean that cannabinoids like THC tend to accumulate in milk — and potentially in infants who drink it,” she added.

The research team also observed differences in peak concentrations based on how much cannabis a person used. Although the study’s small sample size and observational design limited definitive conclusions, participants whose breastmilk showed the quickest peak in THC levels (30-35 minutes after cannabis use) were currently more frequent users who had maintained that higher usage rate for a longer period compared to those with later THC peaks.

“There was such a range,” Elizabeth Holdsworth, the lead author of the study, said in a statement. “If you’re trying to avoid breastfeeding when the concentration of THC peaks, you’re not going to know when THC is at its peak in the milk.”

Many of the moms using cannabis were doing so for therapeutic purposes, including managing anxiety, other mental health issues, or chronic pain. They reported choosing cannabis over other medications because they felt it was safer.

Data on Cannabis and Breastfeeding Limited

Little research exists about the impacts of cannabis on breastfeeding babies, since breastfeeding women are often excluded from clinical trials on medicines, Shelley McGuire, a professor of nutrition at the University of Idaho and co-author of the study, said.

Data on the safety of marijuana exposure is “limited and conflicting,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency adds that breastfeeding mothers are advised not to use marijuana or marijuana-containing products, including those with CBD, the non-psychoactive component in cannabis.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration “strongly advises” against breastfeeding while using cannabis. The FDA notes that exposure to THC can impact the developing brain of a baby, potentially leading to issues such as hyperactive behavior, impaired cognitive abilities, and other lasting adverse effects.

“This is an area that needs substantial, rigorous research for moms to know what’s best,” Ms. McGuire said.

          (TheEpochTimes.com)