Possessing a greater purpose in life is associated with lower mortality rates among older adults according to a new study by researchers at Rush University Medical Center.

Patricia A. Boyle, PhD, and her colleagues from the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, studied 1,238 community-dwelling elderly participants from two ongoing research studies, the Rush Memory and Aging Project and the Minority Aging Research Study. None had dementia. Data from baseline evaluations of purpose in life and up to five years of follow-up were used to test the hypothesis that greater purpose in life is associated with a reduced risk of mortality among community-dwelling older persons.

Purpose in life reflects the tendency to derive meaning from life’s experiences and be focused and intentional, according to Boyle.

Read More

The advantages of volunteering reported by adults aged 55 and older are largely dependent upon the characteristics of the activities in which they participate, according to a recent article appearing in The Gerontologist (Vol. 49, No. 1). The lead author is Nancy Morrow-Howell, PhD, of Washington University in St. Louis.

She and her colleagues document the benefits of volunteering as identified by older adults - a departure from many previous studies, which have focused on the benefits observed by researchers. They also compare reported benefits with information about the volunteer program, such as volunteer training, support, and stipends.

“These findings suggest that characteristics of volunteer programs can be strengthened to maximize the benefits of volunteering to older adults,” the authors state.

Read More

Sol-Gel Technologies Ltd, a specialty pharmaceuticals company, announced today results from a comparative clinical study. The results demonstrate that the company’s two strength Anti-Acne kits achieved pronounced efficacy and markedly improved tolerability. The study will be presented at the 10th International Congress of Dermatology in Prague, May 20-23, 2009.

“As early as week two we noted a very early reduction of acne lesions, which was significantly superior to leading commercial products, and at week four a 75 percent improvement was achieved,” said Stanley Shapiro, PhD, Head of Sol-Gel’s Skin Care Science & Technology unit. “Throughout the study Sol-Gel’s high-strength kits were significantly better tolerated than the two commercial products.”

The Sol-Gel Anti-Acne kits feature Sol-Gel’s patented drug delivery technology. “In the Sol-Gel kits, the proprietary silica microcapsules encase and continuously release the benzoyl peroxide, enabling a significant increase in efficacy and tolerance in comparison to products containing free benzoyl peroxide,” said Ofer Toledano, PhD, VP, Research and Development.

Read More

Older adults may have difficulty understanding speech because of age-related changes in brain tissue, according to new research in the May 13 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The study shows that older adults with the most difficulty understanding spoken words had less brain tissue in a region important for speech recognition. The findings may help explain why hearing aids do not benefit all people with age-related hearing difficulties.

Although some hearing loss can be a normal part of aging, many older adults complain about difficulty understanding speech, especially in challenging listening conditions like crowded restaurants. Research has suggested that this decline in speech recognition is independent of hearing loss.

To identify what causes the decline in speech recognition, the researchers, led by Kelly Harris, PhD, at the Medical University of South Carolina, scanned the brains of 18 younger adults (19-39 years old) and 18 older adults (61-79 years old) as they tried to identify words in listening conditions that varied in difficulty. During a challenging listening condition, the older adults repeated fewer words correctly than did the younger adults, consistent with previous studies.

Read More