This case study of an 83-year-old woman with Down syndrome suggests she is the longest surviving person with the condition. Also noted is the lack of decline in mental function and performance of activities of daily living despite the apparently universal presence of the neuropathologic changes of Alzheimer's disease in persons with Down syndrome…

The Alzheimer's Disease Knowledge Test (ADKT) was administered to samples of practicing nurses in the U.S. and Hong Kong. Overall, U.S. nurses were significantly more knowledgeable, but exhibited more negative bias than Hong Kong nurses. Findings suggest that nurses in both countries need more training. (JPS)

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) invests a disproportionately large share of its resources in research on Alzheimer's Disease at the expense of other interests of the broader scientific community in gerontology. Complex social forces that continue to shape this outcome embrace discipline-specific traditions of science advocacy, as well as…

Comparison of cognitive processes in 23 individuals with Down's syndrome (DS) and 23 individuals of comparable mental handicap without Down's syndrome found that older (above 40 years) DS subjects had significantly poorer outcomes. The areas of speech rate, number finding, and expressive attention appeared to show the earliest signs of dementia of…

Longitudinal 2-year study compared self and family members' reports of physical and functional health among 40 Alzheimer's disease patients and 53 age-matched nondemented healthy older persons. Functional health was consistently rated as more impaired by family caregivers of demented patients than by patients themselves, discrepancy not seen in…

Background: Verbal intrusion errors are irrelevant responses made in the course of verbal memory retrieval or language production that have been associated with disruption of executive functions and the prefrontal cortex. They have been observed to occur more frequently both with normal aging and with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's…

Examines two illness trajectories, Alzheimer's disease and stroke, to illustrate emerging changes in human development over each course of illness and the increasing importance of attachment behavior among ill elders and their family members. Argues that attachment links ailing older people to their environment, and that attachment is vital if…

To elucidate differences between normal age-associated memory impairment (AAMI) and mild Alzheimer's disease (AD), batteries of traditional memory tasks and computer-simulated everyday memory tests were administered to 56 matched AAMI-AD pairs. Results demonstrate the feasibility of discriminating mild AD through these tests. (SLD)

Includes "Foreword. Social Theory and Educational Gerontology: Themes and Future Perspectives" (Phillipson); "Can There Be a Cultural Sociology of Ageing?" (Blaikie); "Consumers, Identity and Old Age" (Vincent); "Population Ageing: Critical Gerontology and the Sociological Tradition" (Phillipson, Biggs);…

An association between weight loss and Alzheimer's disease has been established in the general population but little information is available regarding this association in people with intellectual disabilities. A 4-year longitudinal study of adults with Down syndrome with and without Alzheimer's disease was undertaken. Age-associated weight loss…

Background: Numerous studies have documented that persons with Downs syndrome (DS) are at an increased risk of Alzheimers disease (AD). However, at present it is still not clear whether or not all persons with DS will develop dementia as they reach old age. Methods: We studied 506 people with DS, aged 45 years and above. A standardized assessment…

The present study compares changes in job satisfaction and career commitment among Alzheimer's care staff participating in a two-phase, state-level training collaborative to improve dementia care. Results reveal an increase in extrinsic job satisfaction and a decrease in career commitment. Findings could be related to the effects of both the…

As the population continues to age there remains an unmet need in preventing, identifying, treating, and managing mental/behavioral health problems among older adults. The purpose of this paper is to describe educational and training programs offered through three Geriatric Education Centers: (1) the Meharry Consortium Geriatric Education Center,…

Thirteen articles in this special issue discuss aging theories, biomarkers of aging, aging research, disease, cancer biology, Alzheimer's disease, stress, oxidation of proteins, gene therapy, service delivery, biogerontology, and ethics and aging research. (SK)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the issue of age-limited learning effects on visual lexical decision in normal and pathological aging, by using words with different frequency trajectories and cumulative frequencies. We selected words that objectively changed in frequency trajectory from an early word count (Thorndike, 1921, 1932;…