Death is Obsolete

Centenarians BOOMING in US

America’s population of centenarians – already the largest in the world – has roughly doubled in the past 20 years to around 72,000 and is projected to at least double again by 2020, perhaps even increase seven-fold, according to the Census Bureau.

The Census Bureau estimates there were 71,991 centenarians as of Dec. 1, up from 37,306 two decades earlier. While predicting longevity and population growth is difficult, the census’ low-end estimate for 2050 is 265,000 centenarians; its highest projection puts the number at 4.2 million.

“They have been the fastest-growing segment of our population in terms of age,” said Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University.

The rising number of centenarians is not just a byproduct of the nation’s growing population – they make up a bigger chunk of it. In 1990, about 15 in every 100,000 Americans had reached 100; in 2010, it was more than 23 per 100,000, according to census figures.

Perls said the rise in 100-year-olds is attributed largely to better medical care and the dramatic drop in childhood-mortality rates since the early 1900s. Centenarians also have good genes on their side, he said, and have made common-sense health decisions, such as not smoking and keeping their weight down.

“It’s very clearly a combination of genes and environment,” Perls said.

The Social Security Administration says just under 1 percent of people born in 1910 survived to their 100th birthday. Some have speculated that as many as half of girls born today could live to 100.

Those who work with people 100 and above say the oldest Americans are living much healthier lives. A good number still live independently and remain active, their minds still sharp and their bodies basically sound. They have generally managed to confine serious sickness and disability to the final years of their lives.

Playgrounds too safe, too boring to keep kids active

Boring playgrounds may be one reason preschoolers aren’t getting enough exercise, researchers found in interviews with childcare providers.

Obese boy Strict safety rules for equipment and low budgets at childcare centers were largely blamed for playgrounds that don’t make kids feel like playing, Kristen Copeland, MD, of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and colleagues reported.

“Fixed playground equipment that meets licensing codes is unchallenging and uninteresting to children,” they wrote in the February issue of Pediatrics.

The other main problem cited was pressure to focus on academic readiness at the expense of physically active play time, Copeland’s group noted.

“Societal priorities for young children — safety and school readiness — may be hindering children’s physical development,” they wrote in the paper.

And that’s a problem because three-quarters of U.S. kids attend childcare at ages 3 to 5, where studies have shown that nearly all their time is spent sedentary.

“Because children spend long hours in care and many lack a safe place to play near their home, these barriers may limit children’s only opportunity to engage in physical activity,” Copeland’s group explained. “This is particularly concerning because daily physical activity is not only essential for healthy weight maintenance, but also for practicing and learning fundamental gross motor skills.”

Pediatricians may be able to help address this problem by emphasizing the learning and physical benefits of active outdoor play, encouraging parents to dress their child for it, and not suggesting that physical activity is inherently dangerous when giving injury prevention advice, the researchers noted.

The investigators conducted nine focus groups with a total of 49 childcare providers taking care of preschool-age children at 34 centers in Cincinnati, which varied from inner-city to suburban locations and included some Head Start and Montessori centers.

An abstract or the full text of this study is available free from Pediatrics, published online January 4, 2012.

 

Weight-loss surgery lowers heart attack risk

A Swedish study of more than 4,000 obese people treated at 500 health care centers and surgery departments found that those who had weight-loss surgery were less likely to subsequently suffer a heart attack than those treated with routine care such as advice on lifestyle changes.

About half the patients had bariatric or weight-loss surgeries, most often stomach stapling.

“Compared with usual care, bariatric surgery was associated with reduced number of cardiovascular deaths and lower incidence of cardiovascular events in obese adults,” wrote lead researcher Lars Sjostrom at the University of Gothenburg.

The patents were followed for more than a decade, on average. Among the findings, researchers found that following surgery, patients were 30 percent less likely to have a first-time heart attack or stroke than non-surgery patients. And they were half as likely to die from it.

You can read more about this study by clicking here.

Scientists Reverse Aging in Mice

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 3 – Mice bred to age too quickly seemed to have sipped from the fountain of youth after scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine injected them with stem cell-like progenitor cells derived from the muscle of young, healthy animals. Instead of becoming infirm and dying early as untreated mice did, animals that got the stem/progenitor cells improved their health and lived two to three times longer than expected, according to findings published in the Jan. 3 edition of Nature Communications.

Previous research has revealed stem cell dysfunction, such as poor replication and differentiation, in a variety of tissues in old age, but it’s not been clear whether that loss of function contributed to the aging process or was a result of it, explained senior investigators Johnny Huard, Ph.D., and Laura Niedernhofer, M.D., Ph.D. Dr. Huard is professor in the Departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Pitt School of Medicine, and director of the Stem Cell Research Center at Pitt and Children’s Hospital of PIttsburgh of UPMC. Dr. Niedernhofer is associate professor in Pitt’s Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI).

“Our experiments showed that mice that have progeria, a disorder of premature aging, were healthier and lived longer after an injection of stem cells from young, healthy animals,” Dr. Niedernhofer said. “That tells us that stem cell dysfunction is a cause of the changes we see with aging.”

Their team examined a stem/progenitor cell population derived from the muscle of progeria mice and found that compared to those from normal rodents, the cells were fewer in number, did not replicate as often, didn’t differentiate as readily into specialized cells and were impaired in their ability to regenerate damaged muscle. The same defects were discovered in the stem/progenitor cells isolated from very old mice.

“We wanted to see if we could rescue these rapidly aging animals, so we injected stem/progenitor cells from young, healthy mice into the abdomens of 17-day-old progeria mice,” Dr. Huard said. “Typically the progeria mice die at around 21 to 28 days of age, but the treated animals lived far longer – some even lived beyond 66 days. They also were in better general health.”

As the progeria mice age, they lose muscle mass in their hind limbs, hunch over, tremble, and move slowly and awkwardly. Affected mice that got a shot of stem cells just before showing the first signs of aging were more like normal mice, and they grew almost as large. Closer examination showed new blood vessel growth in the brain and muscle, even though the stem/progenitor cells weren’t detected in those tissues.

In fact, the cells didn’t migrate to any particular tissue after injection into the abdomen.

“This leads us to think that healthy cells secrete factors to create an environment that help correct the dysfunction present in the native stem cell population and aged tissue,” Dr. Niedernhofer said. “In a culture dish experiment, we put young stem cells close to, but not touching, progeria stem cells, and the unhealthy cells functionally improved.”

Animals that age normally were not treated with stem/progenitor cells, but the provocative findings urge further research, she added. They hint that it might be possible one day to forestall the biological declines associated with aging by delivering a shot of youthful vigor, particularly if specific rejuvenating proteins or molecules produced by the stem cells could be identified and isolated.

 

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Co-authors from the University of Pittsburgh include Mitra Lavasani, Ph.D., Aiping Lu, M.D., and Minjung Song, Ph.D., all of the Stem Cell Research Center and the Department of Orthopaedics; Andria Robinson, of UPCI and Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health; Joseph M. Feduska and Bahar Ahani of the Stem Cell Research Center; Jeremy S. Tilstra, Ph.D., and Chelsea H. Feldman of Pitt’s Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics; and Paul D. Robbins, Ph.D., of the departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, and UPCI.

The project was funded by grants ES016114, AG033907 and AR051456 from the National Institutes of Health and additional support from The Ellison Medical Foundation, the Henry J. Mankin Endowed Chair at the University of Pittsburgh, and the William F. and Jean W. Donaldson endowed chair at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.

The Best of Medgadget 2011

Centenarians BOOMING in US

America’s population of centenarians – already the largest in the world – has roughly doubled in the past 20 years to around 72,000 and is projected to at least double again by 2020, perhaps even increase seven-fold, according to the Census Bureau. The Census Bureau estimates there were 71,991 centenarians as of Dec. 1, up …

Continue reading “Centenarians BOOMING in US”

Playgrounds too safe, too boring to keep kids active

Boring playgrounds may be one reason preschoolers aren’t getting enough exercise, researchers found in interviews with childcare providers. Strict safety rules for equipment and low budgets at childcare centers were largely blamed for playgrounds that don’t make kids feel like playing, Kristen Copeland, MD, of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and colleagues reported. “Fixed playground …

Continue reading “Playgrounds too safe, too boring to keep kids active”

The Best of Medgadget 2011

One of our favorite resources, Medgadget, has published its list of some of the most interesting and important developments in the medical technology world during the past year. Click here to read their report.