WLWT 5 reports that local families recently built snowmen outside an assisted living community in Hamilton, Ohio, to bring a little cheer to residents locked in by the pandemic. Ashley Durbrow said she and her son were inspired by a Facebook post from an employee of The Woodlands of Hamilton community, who noted that many residents have not been able to see their loved ones because of COVID-19. The staffer invited anyone in the area to build snowmen outside of residents' windows and lift their spirits. The Woodlands of Hamilton posted photos of residents enjoying the snowmen and smiling faces from their windows, stating, "Thank you to all who brought their kids to build snowmen for our residents. They absolutely loved seeing them play in the snow."

New research in the Journal of General Internal Medicine suggests poor rural patients with Alzheimer's disease may lack access to experts who could identify the first signs of memory declines, reports Medical Xpress . The authors aimed to learn whether Medicare beneficiaries with Alzheimer's and related dementias were getting care from specialized geriatric providers, and whether there were socioeconomic disparities in care access. They used the Southern Community Cohort Study, which enrolled roughly 85,000 people, aged 40 to 79, in 12 southeastern U.S. states between 2002 and 2009. A predominantly low-income population was the source of data. The researchers tracked 10,380 participants who had turned 65 by 2016, of whom 1,295 had at least one Medicare claim indicating Alzheimer's disease and related disorders between 1999 and 2016. People with these conditions and incomes above $24,999 were more likely to have seen a geriatric specialist than those earning less than $15,000, while the chances of having at least one visit were lower for those in non-metropolitan areas. "When we're thinking about how to improve care for these populations, we really need to think about how we increase access for these lower socioeconomic groups," said University of Minnesota Professor and lead study author Sayeh Nikpay.

WCJB reports that University of Florida graduate Ming Yang founded a company to help older adults better navigate technology amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Yang's Orchard tech support and coaching service recently launched a free assistance program to low-income older adults, to help them with the vaccine signup process. "With a lot of places closed down for in-person visits, they can't even walk into a center and knock on the door and say 'hey where can I get this vaccine?,'" Yang noted, adding that Orchard aims to help those who may lack other resources. To participate, users must be 65 years or older, and receive federal aid or earn a yearly income of 300 percent below the poverty line for their state. "This is not about tech support or starting a company," Yang said. "This is about a movement to close the digital literacy gap that will help our older Americans do more with technology and experience more in life."

A study in Hypertension suggests higher blood pressure (BP) at night than during the day may elevate the risk of Alzheimer's disease in older men, reports ScienceDaily . Uppsala University researchers used observational data from 1,000 Swedish older men, monitored for up to 24 years, including men in their early seventies at the start of the study. "The risk of getting a dementia diagnosis was 1.64 times higher among men with reverse dipping excessively high blood pressure at night compared to those with normal dipping," said Uppsala's Xiao Tan. "Reverse dipping mainly increased the risk of Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia." The authors said an interesting next step would be to explore whether the intake of BP-reducing antihypertensive drugs at night can lower older men's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.

The Morningside Assisted Living community in Lancaster, Wis., has set up a wine bar to offer residents some respite during quarantine, reports WMTV-15 . The Corner Bar is open a few afternoons each week and was started by residents Ron Kjos, Dennis Stluka, Richard Hoffman, and Alvin Rolland. Others have been free to join, provided they contribute a bottle. "You're kind of limited to who you can talk to and so here we sit here six feet apart and get to visit and otherwise you're in your room most of the time," said Stluka. The community itself has started donating bottles of wine. "We put a bunch of pictures on Facebook, which has really blossomed in the community," said Morningside Assisted Living administrator Renae Creasey. "We've had friends drop off bottles of wine and snacks for them, which has been great." The community hopes to welcome more people into the Corner Bar once COVID-19 cases decline and visitors can resume group activities.

Experts say that even as the number of COVID-19 infections are declining, Americans should not let their guard down and should continue to focus staying safe because new variants are cropping up across the country, states CNN . Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, says the United States is in the "eye of the hurricane." Nearly 700 cases of COVID-19 variants first spotted in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil have been reported in the United States so far, according to data updated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). On Feb. 7, the United States surpassed 27 million reported infections, according to Johns Hopkins University data, while CDC data reported that more than 31 million Americans have so far received at least their first dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.

CNBC News is reporting that drugmaker AstraZeneca is racing to adapt its COVID-19 vaccine in the face of new variants of the coronavirus. The process has become increasingly urgent after a small-scale study determined that it was less effective at safeguarding against the more virulent strain discovered in South Africa. Known formally as the B.1.351 mutation, the variant was first detected in South Africa in October and has become dominant in that country. A number of cases have been found elsewhere, sending global health authorities scrambling to stop the spread of a mutation that has proven to be more infectious. There had already been concerns that this variant could be more resistant to COVID-19 vaccines developed over the last year.

An international research team has engineered an automated image-analysis technique to expose the pathological progression of Alzheimer's disease, reports Physicsworld . Their study in Science Translational Medicine detailed the application of positron emission tomography (PET) to track the origin and advancement of tau protein as it corresponds to amyloid-beta levels across the brain anatomy of 443 individuals. The investigators initially used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to produce a three-dimensional picture of each individual's unique brain structure, with sufficient detail to visualize various brain subregions. They then conducted two PET studies, with the first using a radiotracer called Pittsburgh compound B, which delineates areas where amyloid-beta is concentrated. The second employed flortaucipir that binds to sites with tau-protein tangles, and then the researchers analyzed the structural MRI data to identify the region most susceptible to initial cortical tau buildup in each individual. They brought the two PET images into alignment with the MRI to assess the amyloid-beta and tau protein levels in each brain subregion. The results indicated that cortical tau protein first manifests in the rhinal cortex, regardless of amyloid-beta levels and often before amyloid-beta buildup; then, when certain individuals additionally accrued amyloid-beta throughout the brain, tau was able to exit the rhinal cortex and spread to the temporal neocortex and extratemporal neocortex. Subjects with the highest baseline tau levels in the rhinal cortex exhibited the largest tau proliferation throughout the neocortex.

The Sydney Memory and Aging Study at the Center for Healthy Brain Aging (CHeBA) in Australia found a link between the effect of hearing loss on cognitive abilities and increased risk for dementia, reports Medical Xpress . The research in Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition analyzed data from 1,037 Australian men and women 70 to 90 years old. Participants reporting moderate-to-severe hearing problems had poorer cognitive performance overall, especially in terms of attention/processing speed and visuospatial ability, and had a 1.5 times higher risk for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia at six years' follow-up. Although hearing loss was independently associated with a higher MCI rate, this was not evident in people with dementia, likely due to the number of people with dementia at follow-up being too small to indicate a statistically significant effect. "Hearing loss may increase cognitive load, resulting in observable cognitive impairment on neuropsychological testing," noted Macquarie University's Paul Strutt. CHeBA Professor Henry Brodaty added that these outcomes "contribute to the evidence base providing support for a study looking at the effect of hearing devices on cognitive function."

The University of Missouri (MU) Center for Eldercare & Rehabilitation Technology has embarked on the Intelligent Health Sensor Research initiative, a project designed to explore fall risk among older adults in order to take preventive measures, reports the Columbian Missourian . The MU team has been recruiting older residents since early 2019 to analyze fall risk and other health changes, in conjunction with monitoring systems. MU scientist Stephen Sayers recently completed a study of the effects of lightweight, fast-mobility weightlifting on people older than 65. His team gauged fall prevention by strapping participants to a rope system, letting them drop forward and then arch a leg to prevent a fall. MU Professor Trent Guess said the team quantified the actions via motion capture and voltage sensors, and participants who performed high-speed training reacted 25 percent faster than the opposite group, and their legs reached out 25 percent farther. Sayers' study also determined that blood pressure was anywhere from 5 percent to 15 percent lower in the high-speed group, which plays a role in the development of heart disease.