The IAA One Minute Blog

Testing a person’s blood for a certain type of protein called phosphorylated tau or p-tau could be used to screen for Alzheimer’s disease with “high accuracy” even before symptoms begin to show, a new study suggests.

Blood Test for Alzheimer's Disease

The study involved testing blood for a key marker of Alzheimer’s called p-tau217 which increases at the same time as other damaging proteins build up in the brains of people with the disease. This blood test was found to be up to 96 percent accurate in identifying elevated levels.

The study included data on 786 people who had an average age of 66 and who had brain scans and spinal taps completed, as well as blood samples collected.

Some of the participants showed signs of cognitive decline while undergoing the data collection, but others did not.

The researchers found when they tested a participant’s blood sample with the p-tau immunoassay, the blood test showed similar results and accuracies identifying abnormalities as the results from the participants’ spinal tap or brain scan.

The study was published in “JAMA Neurology.”

Alzheimer's Disease and the Brain

Alzheimer's is a brain disorder that gets worse over time. It is characterized by changes in the brain that lead to deposits of certain proteins. The disease causes the brain to shrink and brain cells to eventually die.

Brain changes associated with Alzheimer's disease leads to growing trouble with:

• Changes in personality and behavior
• Making judgements and decisions: There is a decline in the ability to make sensitive decisions and judgments in everyday situations.
• Memory: Memory loss associated with the disease persists and gets worse.
• Planning and performing familiar tasks
• Thinking and reasoning: Alzheimer's disease causes difficulty concentrating and thinking, especially with abstract concepts.

About 6.5 million people in the United States age 65 and older live with Alzheimer's.

What IAA has to Say

Insurance Administrator of America is here to keep you informed on the world of health. Remember, with IAA one call does it all.

Folks who use exposure therapy to overcome a single phobia can find themselves less afraid of other things, according to the results of a new study.

Exposure Therapy and Multiple Phobias

Exposure therapy has been proven to be the most effective treatment against phobias, researchers said. By confronting a fear-inducing situation under the supervision of a therapist, patients learn to overcome their fear.

It has long been assumed that a person with a myriad of fears would require multiple rounds of exposure therapy. Each round targeting a different phobia. To challenge this assumption, researchers performed exposure therapy treating a fear of spiders on 50 people who also had a fear of heights.

Prior to the therapy, participants answered questionnaires and performed tasks to quantify their phobias.

People who underwent exposure therapy for spiders wound up experiencing an average 15 percent reduction in their fear of heights, results show.

It is not clear why the effect of exposure therapy transferred from one fear to the other. It might be the participants gained more confidence as a result of conquering a phobia.

The study was published in the journal, “Translational Psychiatry.”

Phobias and Your Health

Phobias can limit your daily activities and may cause severe anxiety and depression.

People with phobias can have panic attacks. The symptoms often occur suddenly and without warning. Physical symptoms produced include:

• A choking sensation
• Butterflies in the stomach
• Confusion or disorientation
• Dry mouth
• Feeling faint
• Headaches or dizziness
• Hot flushes or chills
• Nausea
• Numbness or pins and needles
• Pain or tightness in the chest
• Rapid heartbeat
• Ringing in your ears
• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
• Sweating
• Trembling

People  with phobias purposely avoid coming into contact with the thing that causes them fear and anxiety.

What IAA has to Say

Insurance Administrator of America is here to keep you informed on the world of health. Learn more from IAA’s blog posts.

The average liter of bottled water has nearly a quarter million invisible pieces of tiny nanoplastics, detected and categorized for the first time by a microscope using dual lasers.

Bottled Water Study

Looking at five samples each of three common bottled water brands, researchers found particle levels ranged from 110,000 to 400,000 per liter, averaging at around 240,000, according to the study. These are particles that are less than a micron in size.

The researchers looked for seven common types of plastics. These seven types of plastics accounted for only 10 percent of the nanoparticles detected in bottled water, and researchers have not determined what the other 90 percent are made of.

Much of the plastic seems to be coming from the bottle itself and the reverse osmosis membrane filter used to keep out other contaminants.

The new laser-based technique to detect microplastic and nanoplastic particles was used to analyze the popular United States water brands.

The study was published in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

What IAA has to Say

Insurance Administrator of America is here to keep you informed on the world of health. Remember, with IAA one call does it all.

Sleep and how it affects peoples’ health has been making headlines. See what researchers have to say about sleep.

Sleep Impacts Emotions

Staying up late, sleeping too little or waking up often can impact a person's emotional health, according to a new analysis that spans decades of sleep research.

All of the 154 studies that the researchers used involved studying participants overnight while evaluating different ways people can lose sleep. Techniques used were:

• Keeping people awake for extended periods of time
• Periodically awakening them through the night
• Waking them up earlier than usual

Researchers looked for how these changes in sleep affected people’s emotions, as well as the impact on mood.

By combining data for the more than 5,700 people in all the studies, researchers found that reductions in sleep:

• Diminished the ability to express emotions
• Increased anxiety symptoms
• Reduced positive emotions

The more sleep the person lost, the greater the emotional toll.

Participants in the study were generally healthy and ranged in age from 7 years to 79 years old.

The research appeared in the American Psychological Association journal, “Psychological Bulletin.” 

Hitting the Snooze Button

Research has found no evidence that snoozing past your morning alarm has negative effects on sleep and cognitive processes. Instead, snoozing may help regular snoozers’ waking process.

The research included two studies. The first observed the waking habits of 1,732 adults, 69 percent of whom reported using the snooze function or setting multiple alarms at least some of the time.  In this group, snoozing ran from 1 to 180 minutes, with an average of 22 minutes spent snoozing per morning. Researchers also found snoozers tended to be younger than non-snoozers and identified themselves as evening types more than morning people.

The second study focused on the sleeping and waking patterns of 31 regular snoozers. After 30 minutes of snoozing, researchers found this group lost about six minutes of sleep but did not find clear effects on stress hormone levels, morning tiredness, mood, or overnight sleep quality. For some, snoozing also improved cognitive performance once awake, as compared to waking up immediately.

The research was published in the “Journal of Sleep Research.”

What IAA has to Say

Insurance Administrator of America knows sleep is important to everyone’s health. IAA hopes that everyone gets a good night’s sleep!

A new melanoma vaccine has shown it can battle the deadly skin cancer in a new trial.

Vaccine Trial

Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer, with melanoma accounting for about one percent of skin cancer cases in the United States. According to the American Cancer Society, it is still responsible for most skin cancer deaths.

People with advanced melanomas who received the vaccine plus the cancer drug Keytruda were 49 percent less likely to die or have their cancer return after three years than those who were only given Keytruda.

The findings were based on an ongoing randomized trial involving 157 patients with high-risk stage 3/4 melanoma who first had surgery to completely remove cancerous growths.

Patients received one milligram (mg) of the mRNA vaccine every three weeks, for a total of nine doses, along with 200 mg of Keytruda every three weeks for about a year. Their outcomes were compared to those using Keytruda alone for a year.

Skin Cancer Warning Signs

The most important warning sign of a melanoma is a new spot on the skin or a spot that is changing in size, shape or color.

The ABCDE rule is another guide to the signs of melanoma:

• A is for Asymmetry: One half of a mole or birthmark does not match the other.
• B is for Border: The edges are irregular, ragged, notched, or blurred.
• C is for Color: The color is not the same all over.
• D is for Diameter: The spot is larger than six millimeters across.
• E is for Evolving: The mole is changing in size, shape or color.   

About 97,610 new melanomas will be diagnosed in the U.S. this year, with nearly 8,000 deaths, the American Cancer Society says.

What IAA has to Say

Insurance Administrator of America is always glad when new breakthroughs occur. Stay tuned to IAA’s blog to keep up to date on the world of health!