Category: ageing

Cocaine Eats Up Brain Twice as Fast as Normal Aging

On By A.P.In aged brain, ageing, aging, cocaine, Drugs, Karen Ersche, LiveScience, Medicine, Neuropsychiatric Disease, Science, The Brain, University of CambridgeLeave a comment

Chronic cocaine use may speed up brain aging, a new study suggests.

British researchers scanned the brains of 60 people with cocaine dependence and 60 people with no history of substance abuse, and found that those with cocaine dependence had greater levels of age-related loss of brain gray matter.

The cocaine users lost about 3.08 milliliters (ml) of brain volume a year, nearly twice the rate of about 1.69 ml per year seen in the healthy people, the University of Cambridge researchers said.

The increased decline in brain volume in the cocaine users was most noticeable in the prefrontal and temporal cortex, regions associated with attention, decision-making, self-regulation and memory, the investigators noted in a university news release.

“As we age, we all lose gray matter. However, what we have seen is that chronic cocaine users lose gray matter at a significantly faster rate, which could be a sign of premature aging. Our findings therefore provide new insight into why the [mental] deficits typically seen in old age have frequently been observed in middle-aged chronic users of cocaine,” Dr. Karen Ersche, of the Behavioral and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at University of Cambridge, said in the news release.

The study is published in the April 25 issue of the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Cocaine is used by as many as 21 million people worldwide, and about 1 percent of these people become dependent on the drug, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

While the study doesn’t conclusively prove cocaine causes brain atrophy and other symptoms of aging, the association is cause for concern, the researchers said.

“Our findings clearly highlight the need for preventative strategies to address the risk of premature aging associated with cocaine abuse. Young people taking cocaine today need to be educated about the long-term risk of aging prematurely,” Ersche said.

However, accelerated aging also affects older adults who have abused cocaine and other drugs since early adulthood.

“Our findings shed light on the largely neglected problem of the growing number of older drug users, whose needs are not so well catered for in drug treatment services. It is timely for health care providers to understand and recognize the needs of older drug users in order to design and administer age-appropriate treatments,” Ersche said.

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/04/24/cocaine-habit-might-speed-brain-aging

World’s oldest man, Salustiano ‘Shorty’ Sanchez, dies aged 112

On By A.P.In ageing, aging, Anacin, Arturo Licata, death, Guinness World Records, Jeanne Louise Calment, Jiroemon Kimura, New York, oldest person in the world, Salustiano 'Shorty' Sanchez, Salustiano Sanchez, World RecordsLeave a comment

Salustiano Sanchez

The world’s oldest man, a gin rummy-playing, one-time sugarcane worker born in Spain, has died at 112 in New York state, a funeral home said on Saturday.

Salustiano “Shorty” Sanchez, recognised by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest man, died on Friday at a nursing home in Grand Island, New York, the MJ Colucci & Son Funeral Chapels said on its website.

Guinness said in June that Sanchez, who also had been a construction worker, was the oldest man following the death of 116-year-old Jiroemon Kimura of Japan.

Sanchez credited his longevity to eating one banana per day and taking Anacin daily, according to a recent Guinness online profile. He told Guinness that living so long was not a special accomplishment.

Sanchez was born in El Tejado de Bejar, Spain, in 1901 and worked as a sugarcane field worker in Cuba before emigrating to the United States, where he found work in Kentucky coalmines.

Sanchez liked to garden, do crossword puzzles, and play gin rummy every night with friends, according to Guinness.

Sanchez was known for his musical talents as a boy, playing a dulzaina, a Spanish double reed instrument related to the oboe, Guinness said. He went to school until age 10.

Sanchez moved to the Niagara Falls area of New York state in the early 1930s and became a construction worker. He worked for Union Carbide Co for more than 30 years before retiring.

He married his wife, Pearl, in 1934. Sanchez had two children, seven grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and five great-great grandchildren, according to Guinness.

With his death, the world’s oldest man is Arturo Licata of Italy at 111. The oldest woman is Misao Okawa of Japan at 115, according to the Gerontology Research Group, which tracks people 110 and older and validates ages for Guinness.

The greatest authenticated age for any human is 122 years, 164 days by Jeanne Louise Calment of France.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/15/worlds-oldest-man-salustiana-sanchez-dies