Memantine for PDD or DLB

Underwriting Quick Notes:

  • PDD = Parkinson’s Disease Dementia
  • DLB = Dementia with Lewy Bodies
  • Memantine = Namenda

Memantine for patients with Parkinson’s disease dementia or dementia with Lewy bodies: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial : The Lancet Neurology

Memantine seems to improve global clinical status and behavioural symptoms of patients with mild to moderate DLB, and might be an option for treatment of these patients.

Emphysema on CT Significantly Correlated With Mortality

Click through for the abstract.  There is a link on the page for a PDF version.

CT Scan Findings of Emphysema Predict Mortality in COPD — CHEST

Results: Of the 251 patients, 79 died, with 40 classified as respiratory deaths not involving lung cancer. Univariate Cox analysis revealed that emphysematous change as assessed by CT scan, lung function, age, or BMI were significantly correlated with mortality. Multivariate analysis revealed that emphysematous change as assessed by CT scan had the best association with mortality.

Conclusions: Emphysematous change as assessed by CT scan predicts respiratory mortality in outpatients with various stages of COPD.

Depression + CHD = Bad

Medical News: Depression Plus Heart Disease Equal Lethal Combo – in Psychiatry, Depression from MedPage Today

The risk of all-cause mortality was elevated 67% for patients with coronary heart disease (P<0.05) and 2.10 times for those with depressive symptoms (P<0.001) in the long-running Whitehall II study of British civil servants.

But patients who had both conditions had a nearly five-fold risk compared with those who had neither (hazard ratio 4.99, P<0.001), Hermann Nabi, PhD, of the University of Versailles, France, and colleagues reported online in Heart.

Scary Charts of the Day – 09.20.2010

Number of People Using Google Reader Minimum Once WeeklyNumber of Google Reader Items Read Per Day

Official Google Reader Blog: A welcome and a look back

These charts should be extremely scary especially to folks in the newspaper and media businesses.  If you wanted some hard evidence on consumer preferences for news outlets shifting to the Internet, here you go.  The top chart is the number of people who use Google Reader at least once a week.  The bottom chart is the number of items read on Google Reader.

Personally, we still buy a daily newspaper.

The New US Economy

Lost Decade for American Income – WSJ.com

For your Scary Charts check out the article link below.

Falling off the American Dream treadmill – Real median U.S. household income falls under $50,000. Poverty rate has grown exponentially since 2000, during the housing bubble.

Or see what Yves Smith is writing about real estate.

Latest Real Estate Time Bomb: Title of Foreclosed Properties Clouded; Wells Fargo Dumping Risk on Hapless Buyers « naked capitalism