Health

Alzheimer's drug slows onset in some patients

PHILADELPHIA - People with a common memory disorder that often leads to Alzheimer's disease may be able to delay that fate briefly by taking a drug normally prescribed for Alzheimer's, a new study indicates.

But ultimately the drug Aricept doesn't cut the risk of getting the feared illness, despite an average delay of six months.

Dr. Ronald Petersen of the Mayo Clinic, the lead author of the study - presented Sunday at the Ninth International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders - said it was too early to make any recommendations for doctors and patients.

The experiment is the first to show that Alzheimer's can be delayed in people with a memory disorder called mild cognitive impairment, Petersen said.

MCI may be at least as common as Alzheimer's, which afflicts some 4-million Americans. Petersen said it might appear in some 18 to 20 percent of people older than 65. People with MCI repeatedly forget important things like luncheon engagements and golfing dates, often enough that friends and family notice the problem. But they don't show other symptoms of Alzheimer's like impaired judgment or reasoning. Most go on to develop Alzheimer's, Petersen said.

The same study found no effect from vitamin E, long viewed as a possible weapon against Alzheimer's.

TOLEDO, Ohio - Flicking away pesky mosquitoes may be better than swatting the bloodsucking insects, which can invite infections if their body parts are smashed into human skin, researchers say.

The issue is reviewed in an article published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine that focuses on a 57-year-old Pennsylvania woman who died in 2002 of a fungal infection in her muscles called Brachiola algerae.

Doctors were puzzled because the fungus was thought to be found only in mosquitoes and other insects. But it's not found in mosquito saliva, like West Nile virus and malaria, so a simple mosquito bite could not have caused the infection.

The article's authors concluded that the woman must have smashed a mosquito on her skin, smearing it into the bite.

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