A drug used for stroke patients may help sharpen middle-aged brains, researchers are reporting.
If proven in humans, the drug may one day help blunt the impact of normal aging “or even enhance learning and memory throughout the life span,” the American Psychological Association said in an announcing the findings, published in the February issue of the journal, Behavioral Neuroscience.
“I do think that we are going to move into that area,” says lead author Matthew Huentelman, an investigator at the non-profit Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, Arizona.
“Really, we stumbled on this drug, and what do we do with it? Our drug is only supposed to be used for sick people. Can it be used for healthy individuals as well? It’s a tough question.”
University students are already using Ritalin and other prescription amphetamines to boost their grades. A survey by Nature, a top science magazine, last year revealed one-fifth of its global readership admitted to using “cognition-enhancing” drugs to help them concentrate. And seven prominent neuroscientists and ethicists recently argued in the same journal that not only is the trend likely to grow, but that “mentally competent adults” should be free to use safe cognitive enhancements without being made out to be felons.
But is using brain enhancers to boost productivity and give people a competitive edge cheating, like doping in sports? Would workers need protection from pressure from employers to “enhance?”
Several drugs now being tested in humans may help stave off normal, age-related memory decline in healthy people, and many drugs used to treat psychiatric and neurological problems can also increase how quickly and accurately people think.
The Arizona study began several years ago, when researchers identified a gene that plays a role in memory in humans.
Next they looked for drugs that affect the gene’s function. They tested Fasudil, a drug that improves blood flow to the brain, in rats.
They took 18-month old rats – the equivalent of late-middle-aged humans – and gave the rodents daily injections of hydroxyfasudil, the active form of Fasudil. (In rats, it’s easier to give the drug by injection. People take it in pill form.)
The dosed rats performed significantly better on water maze testing learning and memory than rats given a saline solution. The doped rodents performed more like four-month old rats, or the equivalent of a teenager in human years.
“It was a pretty significant improvement in their memory performance,” Huentelman says.
There were no side effects, and the drug has been shown to be safe and well tolerated when used in humans. The findings, and the relative safety of the drug, support its potential as a “cognitive enhancer in humans,” the researchers report.
Huentelman worries about cognitive-enhancers creeping into high schools and colleges, but if the drugs can push out the onset of Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias by even five years, “that’s a massive impact.”
“To me, aging is the worst disease, because it happens to all of us. Improving our ability to age, aging more gracefully as they famously say, is a benefit for all.”
Four of the researchers hold stock in the drug company that owns the rights to develop this drug class as a potential memory enhancer. They said the company was not directly involved in the study and did not fund any part of it.
skirkey@canwest.com

Eating a diet rich in fish and vegetables, while low in meat and dairy, lowers an older person’s risk of developing mild mental impairment and Alzheimer’s disease, a study showed.
Those who adhered most closely to the Mediterranean diet had a 28 percent lower risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, which is a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease in many people, than those who didn’t, research in the February issue of Archives of Neurology found.
The benefit was larger for those who already had cognitive impairment. People with the impairment who followed the diet closely had a 48 percent lower probability of developing Alzheimer’s disease than those who didn’t eat similar food, according to the study, which is among the first to examine the effect of the Mediterranean diet on the risk of this mental decline.
“It’s another piece of evidence that should reinforce healthy diet behavior,” said lead author Nikolaos Scarmeas, an assistant professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. With this study, people “have an additional reason to follow a healthy diet. It may not only help them from vascular risk factors, but it may also be helpful for their brain function as well.”
About 5 million Americans ages 65 and older have Alzheimer’s, and the number may triple by 2050, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Mild cognitive impairment is the stage between the normal mental decline seen with aging and more serious problems caused by Alzheimer’s, according to the Mayo Clinic. Not all people with mild cognitive impairment go on to develop Alzheimer’s.
Researchers in the study looked at 1,393 people with no cognitive problems and 482 people with mild cognitive impairment. Those in the study were asked to complete a food questionnaire. They were then divided into three groups based on how closely their eating habits matched the Mediterranean diet. The average age in the study was about 77.
Among those who started the study with mild cognitive impairment, 106 developed Alzheimer’s disease over about 4.3 years of follow-up. Those in the group that stuck most closely to the Mediterranean diet showed a 48 percent lower risk for developing Alzheimer’s.
Scarmeas cited many reasons why the Mediterranean diet may lower the risk of Alzheimer’s and mild cognitive impairment. The diet has been shown to help lower blood pressure and cholesterol, and it reduces inflammation in the body, all of which may play a role in developing either mental condition, he said.

Many Americans are starved for sleep, and experts said the results may be showing up on your scale.
Numerous studies suggest not getting sufficient sleep makes it more difficult to lose weight or keep it off. Experts said restful sleep raises the level of a hormone that regulates hunger, but not getting enough sleep increases a hormone that stimulates the appetite.
Sleep experts Michael Breus, Ph.D. and Steven Lamm, M.D., created a “Sleep Diet” to counter this problem and tested it with seven women.
The “Sleep Diet” calls for a minimum of seven and a half hours of sleep every night. Experts said some people may need more than that. The other rules include not consuming any caffeine after 2:30 p.m. and avoiding alcohol within three hours of going to bed. The final guideline is to go to sleep at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning.
The complete results of the “Sleep Diet” experiment are profiled in the March edition of Glamour Magazine, and they are encouraging. The participants lost 6 to 15 pounds in 10 weeks without making deliberate changes in what they ate or how much they exercised.
The program may sound simple, but experts said it would be a major change for many women. According to the National Sleep Foundation, the average woman gets six hours and 40 minutes of sleep each night.
Some of the participants admitted it was tough to stick with the plan after the 10-week test period ended, especially during the busy December holiday season.
To find out more about the “Sleep Diet,”
To learn more about the connection between sleep and weight,

You may have read reports of a study that showed a vegan diet can be helpful for people with rheumatoid arthritis. But is it true? There are lots of problems with the way the study was carried out, and the results are far from clear.
What do we know already?
Rheumatoid arthritis is a painful condition that causes stiffness and swelling in your joints. It happens because of a problem with your immune system. Your immune system fights infections in your body, but if you have rheumatoid arthritis, it also attacks healthy tissue in your joints. People with rheumatoid arthritis have a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes.
There are lots of treatments for rheumatoid arthritis. Many people take ibuprofen or a similar drug to help with pain and swelling. Other drugs can be used to slow down the damage to your joints.
There has been a lot of interest in whether eating particular types of food can help with the symptoms of arthritis. One small study suggests a Mediterranean diet, which includes lots of fruit, vegetables and fish and little meat, might help reduce the joint pain people get from rheumatoid arthritis. Researchers have also studied fish oil and vegetarian diets.
Researchers have now done a study looking at whether a vegan, gluten-free diet could help people with rheumatoid arthritis. A vegan diet involves no animal products of any kind. Gluten is found in wheat and some other cereals. Avoiding gluten means cutting out most types of bread, pasta, pizza, pastry and cakes. In the study, one group followed this strict diet, while another group followed a healthy, balanced diet that wasn’t vegan.
All the people in the study carried on taking their usual medicines for rheumatoid arthritis.
What does the new study say?
People in the study who ate the vegan, gluten-free diet lost some weight. But as they were normal weight to begin with, we don’t know if that’s a good thing. They also saw very small drops in their cholesterol levels, compared to the start of the study.
They had a slightly higher amount of a natural antibody that helps fight the damage caused by rheumatoid arthritis. But we don’t know what, if any, effect this had on the disease.
The researchers didn’t look at whether the people on the diet had less pain or joint damage from rheumatoid arthritis. So we don’t know if it had any effect on the main problems from the disease.
It’s also obvious from the study that a vegan, gluten-free diet is very hard to stick to. Out of 38 people who tried the diet, eight gave up within three months. Another eight dropped out before the end of the study, which lasted a year. And this was despite having a week of training about how to prepare vegan food, and continuing support from doctors, nurses and dietitians. No-one dropped out of the study from the group who were asked to eat a balanced, non-vegan diet.
Where does the study come from?
The study was done by researchers from the Rheumatology Unit at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. It appeared in the journal Arthritis Research and Therapy, published by a company called BioMed Central.
How reliable are the findings?
This study has a number of problems that make it hard to rely on the findings. It was a small study, and only looked at 66 people to start with. Of these, 16 people who were supposed to eat a vegan diet dropped out before the end of the study.
The researchers only looked at the results of the people who didn’t drop out. This means that they ignored results for all the people who found the diet hard to stick to, or perhaps had to stop the diet for health reasons.
The researchers compared the weights and cholesterol levels of the two groups against their figures at the start of the study, not against the other group. This makes it hard to draw conclusions about whether one diet worked better than the other.
What does this mean for me?
Rheumatoid arthritis is a painful condition, and it’s only natural to consider anything that might help. But this study is a long way from proving that a gluten-free or vegan diet can help with rheumatoid arthritis. The most the researchers could say was that there’s a “potential” benefit.
What should I do now?
There’s no need to make drastic changes to your diet as a result of this study. It doesn’t show that a vegan diet helps people with rheumatoid arthritis.
And strict diets, like a vegan diet, can make it hard to get all the nutrients your body needs. It’s a good idea to talk to a doctor or dietitian before making big changes to what you eat, especially if you plan to completely cut out particular foods.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA), which advises on food safety in the UK, says vegans need to take special care that they get enough:
Protein (found in beans, lentils and soya products)
Selenium (from nuts, especially brazils)
Vitamin B12 (from yeast extract, bread or fortified breakfast cereals).
It’s important to remember that the people in the study were taking medicines for arthritis as well as eating a vegan diet. The research doesn’t suggest that a diet can be used instead of drugs. Not getting the right medicines for rheumatoid arthritis can mean you’re in pain, and also mean more damage to your joints.
If you have rheumatoid arthritis and your treatment isn’t helping, make an appointment to see your doctor. Changing the drug or drugs you’re taking may help to reduce your symptoms.
Elkan A, Sjoberg B, Kolsrud B, et al. Gluten-free vegan diet induces decreased LDL and oxidized LDL levels and raised atheroprotective natural antibodies against phosphorylcholine in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a randomized study. Arthritis Research and Therapy. 2008; 10: R34.
To read more, see our information on rheumatoid arthritis.

Respiratory reactive disease, sometimes called reactive airway disease and better known as exercise-induced asthma, is a form of asthma that occurs among people who don’t have the allergies or recurrent infections that usually trigger asthma symptoms. Instead, their symptoms (wheezing, coughing, shortness of breath) occur when they exert themselves, as in aerobic exercise. Fortunately, attacks are preventable with proper precautions, changes in diet and lifestyle, and with medications in the form of inhalers for use prior to exercise.