Geriatric Medicine News

As health care workers begin to understand the scope of COVID-19 in their areas and how to respond to it, a new anxiety has set in: How long will the pandemic last?

A series of review articles found limited or inconsistent data supporting the accuracy of biomarkers and cognitive tests for diagnosing and differentiating Alzheimer’s disease, as well as drug treatments that minimally impacted functional decline.

Higher levels of caffeine intake and plasma urate were associated with a lower risk for developing Parkinson’s disease, according to research published in the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease.

Women older than 75 years who were provided with a mammography screening decision aid before visiting their primary care physician were more likely to make more informed screening decisions than those who did not receive the decision aid, according to randomized clinical trial results published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The American Geriatrics Society, or AGS, recently issued a policy brief to urge the federal government to take action to protect some of the most vulnerable Americans against COVID-19 — patients in nursing homes.

Most community-dwelling older adults with newly identified dementia died or were admitted to a long-term care home within 5 years, according to results of a population-based, retrospective cohort study conducted in Ontario and published in Canadian Medical Association Journal.

The unique challenges of COVID-19 require adjustments to the delivery of palliative care during the pandemic, according to an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Use of benzodiazepines and nonbenzodiazepines, or Z-drugs, did not appear associated with subsequent dementia, according to results of a nationwide cohort and nested case-control study published in American Journal of Psychiatry.

During a virtual Town Hall meeting recently hosted by the AMA, experts reviewed the latest research on COVID-19 and addressed questions from health care providers on the front lines about the availability of personal protective equipment, treatments for COVID-19 and efforts to secure the financial stability of private practices.

The addition of the claims-based frailty index to the CMS Hierarchical Condition Category to Medicare’s cost prediction model correctly predicted costs of care, especially for clinicians with a disproportionate number of patients who were frail, according to a retrospective cohort study published in Annals of Internal Medicine.