Health Buzz: Gene Causes Memory Loss Before Age 60 and Other Health News

Alzheimer's Gene Causes Memory Loss Before Age 60

A new study finds that people who inherit the gene variant ApoE4 may have signs of memory trouble in their 50s, Reuters reports. Researchers at Mayo Clinic Arizona studied the genes of 815 healthy people ages 21 to 97; they found that 317 of study participants had the ApoE4 gene variant. People with the ApoE4 gene were more likely to have early memory decline, and the decline was worse in people who inherited the gene from both parents, according to Reuters. The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggest Alzheimer's may be diagnosed with genetic tests even before symptoms of dementia show up. The ApoE4 gene variant raises one's risk of developing Alzheimer's by more than 50 percent, but not all people who have it will develop the disease, Reuters reports.

Learn 10 things you should know about Alzheimer's disease. Check out one family's story of dealing with the illness. And read how one researcher's technique could allow doctors to determine within days whether an Alzheimer's treatment is working.

America's Best Hospitals

America's Best Hospitals, an annual ranking of the country's elite medical centers, is a tool for patients who need medical sophistication most facilities cannot offer. This year, the 20th for Best Hospitals, institutions are ranked in 16 specialties, from cancer and heart disease to respiratory disorders and urology. A total of 4,861 hospitals were considered; 174, or fewer than 0.4 percent of the total, were ranked in even one of the 16 specialties. Of the 174 hospitals that are ranked in one or more specialties, 21 qualified for the Honor Roll by earning high scores in at least six specialties. This demonstrates unusual breadth of excellence, U.S. News's rankings editor Avery Comarow writes.

See a list of the complete rankings at U.S. News's America's Best Hospitals. Take a photo-guided tour of the Honor Roll, and read how technology is changing the way medicine is practiced in a high-tech hospital of the future.

Brain Stimulation: Can Magnetic or Electrical Pulses Help You?

In recent years, medical attention has focused on the potential of brain stimulation therapies, which interrupt misbehaving brain signals. Depression and Parkinson's disease have been the subject of a considerable body of brain stimulation research, and clinical trials are now investigating the therapies to treat pain, epilepsy, Tourette's syndrome, tinnitus, obsessive-compulsive disorder, headache, and other conditions. The therapies—including electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and deep brain stimulation (DBS)—work to rejigger the brain's electrical circuitry and provide relief from debilitating symptoms that don't respond to medications, U.S. News's Sarah Baldauf reports.

The question at the heart of therapeutic brain stimulation research has been: Can medicine and technology manipulate neurological circuits to inhibit or excite specific areas of the brain that are causing trouble? Clinicians and researchers have, in some cases, been able to answer, yes. Continue reading.

Read about one researcher who is using transcranial magnetic stimulation to treat severe depression. In an international trial, depressed patients who hadn't been helped by drugs improved markedly after four weeks of daily, 40-minute TMS sessions.

—Megan Johnson

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