Steinbrenner, ICAD 2010, and More Alzheimer's in the News

Yankees Owner Dies at 80 — George Steinbrenner, who purchased the team in 1973 and had been suffering from a number of confirmed and assumed illnesses (including Alzheimer’s disease), died after suffering a massive heart attack at his home in Tampa, FL early this morning.

International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease 2010 — The annual meeting runs through July 15th and has featured presentations on the link between race and Alzheimer’s progression and severity; the launch of the new Alzheimer’s Association’s “Research Center” website, designed to increase the public’s knowledge of Alzheimer’s; and the start of TrialMatch, the Alzheimer’s Association’s new confidential, free tool that provides comprehensive clinical trial information and an individualized trial matching service through phone- and Internet-based service.

Gene Linked to Obesity May Also Raise Dementia Risk — Researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have discovered that a variant of the obesity-related gene FTO may also increase an individual’s risk for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, a risk that could be further increased for individuals with the FTO-AA variant and a gene mutation, APOE4, the highest-risk variant of the known Alzheimer's-related gene called APOE.

Low Levels of Vitamin D Linked with Cognitive Decline, Alzheimer’s — Older men and women with low levels of vitamin D “were 60 percent more likely to have substantial cognitive decline during the six year follow-up and 30 percent more likely to have declines on the test measuring executive function than those with sufficient levels,” according to new research from the University of Exeter in England.