Updated guidance from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends that patients start screening for colorectal cancer at age 45 instead of 50, reports Becker's Hospital Review . The task force urged persons 45 to 75 to be screened for the disease, and the guidance is applicable to all adults, regardless of symptoms, or personal or family history. The USPSTF classified the recommendation to start screening earlier as Grade B, signifying "high certainty that the net benefit is moderate or there is moderate certainty that the net benefit is moderate to substantial." USPSTF Vice Chair Michael Barry cited too few Americans undergoing screening, adding that "we hope that this new recommendation to screen people ages 45 to 49, coupled with our long-standing recommendation to screen people 50 to 75, will prevent more people from dying from colorectal cancer." The recommendations also advise making the decision of whether to screen older adults aged 76 to 85 on an individual basis. "Since the Affordable Care Act mandates that insurance companies cover preventative services with a Grade B or higher recommendation from the USPSTF with no copay, this screening should now be covered," said Heather Hampel at Ohio State University in Columbus.

Amber Court Assisted Living has entered into a partnership with Morrison Living to offer residents and guests of Amber's Smithtown and Westbury communities on Long Island customizable dining and a person-centered approach to nutrition and wellness, reports Globe Newswire . Morrison Living uses a data-first approach that analyzes cuisines, market trends, focus group feedback, and the point-of-sale system to make sure residents eat what they want, when they want, and how they want it. "We are proud to work with Amber Court to provide the highest-quality culinary experience to the seniors in their communities," said Morrison Living's John Pankcovcin. "This partnership gives us the opportunity to deepen the resident experience while providing them the best opportunity to enhance wellness and make a difference in their lives."

A Cornell University-led pilot program aims to support older adults living alone and diagnosed with mild dementia to take important medications safely, reports the Cornell Chronicle . Using a $250,000 U.S. National Institutes of Health grant, Cornell Professor Rana Zadeh and partners will launch the Home Opioid Prescription Education and Smart Storage (HOPES) program in two upstate New York counties near Cornell's Ithaca campus. The initiative will supply 40 residents of Tompkins and Cortland counties with assistive medication organizers and training to help them plan, structure, and take medications as prescribed. Zadeh said assistive medication organizers and support for medication management are not currently covered by health insurance for all populations in critical need, and would be unaffordable for many older adults living at home. HOPES will help embed the pill organizers into participants' daily lives and train users and their caregivers on how to operate them and on medication safety. "If we can utilize this integrative program to help people manage their medication schedules better, they will be able to remain at home longer, and unnecessary hospitalizations may be prevented," said Deb Parker Traunstein with the Visiting Nurse Service of Ithaca and Tompkins County, which helped develop HOPES.

A Michigan State University (MSU) research team found that poor sense of smell may signify a higher risk of pneumonia in older men and women, reports the Times Now News . An acute loss of smell is among the most common symptoms of COVID-19. However, for two decades, it has been linked to other maladies like dementia and Parkinson's disease. "About a quarter of adults 65 years or older have a poor sense of smell," remarks Honglei Chen, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics within MSU's College of Human Medicine. "Unlike vision or hearing impairment, this sensory deficit has been largely neglected; more than two-thirds of people with a poor sense of smell do not know they have it." In this first-of-its-kind study, Chen and his team analyzed 13 years of health data from 2,494 older adults, ages 71-82, from metropolitan areas of Memphis and Pittsburgh. The study was published in the journal Lancet Healthy Longevity .

A study published in Nature Human Behaviour found older adults and adolescents are less attentive to social cues in real-world interactions than young adults, reports Yahoo! Style . The investigation is the first ever to study the allocation of social attention during adolescence and whether it diverges from adulthood. The researchers recorded participants in two real-world social interaction situations — a face-to-face dialogue and navigating an environment — using mobile eye-tracking glasses. Adolescents (10-19 years old), young (20-40 years old), and older (60-80 years old) subjects were evaluated. In the first scenario, adolescents and older adults spent less time looking at the experimenter's face during the conversation, and more time concentrating on background, compared to young adults; the second experiment involved adolescents and older adults spending less time looking at people while navigating a busy university campus, compared to young adults. "Focusing less on people and their faces means that adolescents and older adults miss important cues, and this could lead to larger impairments in social interaction," said University of Kent Professor Heather Ferguson.

A new study has suggested that conversations on Zoom during the pandemic have helped older adults stave off dementia, reports CNN . The study investigated the communication of 11,418 men and women over the age of 50; they were asked how frequently they engaged with friends and family online, on the phone, and in person, and then completed memory tests that involved remembering a list of 10 words at various intervals. Those who only used "traditional," face-to-face communication exhibited more signs of cognitive decline than those who used technology to stay in touch with friends and family. "This shows for the first time the impact of diverse, frequent, and meaningful interactions on long-term memory, and specifically, how supplementing more traditional methods with online social activity may achieve that among older adults," said Snorri Rafnsson at the University of West London. "With more and more older adults now using online communication so frequently, especially during the past year of global lockdowns, it poses the question as to what extent technology can help sustain relationships and overcome social isolation, and how that can also help maintain brain health."

CBS News reports that fully vaccinated older Americans are fueling a surge in new travel bookings, according to travel agencies. Travel adviser Hillel Spinner said he has seen a 110 percent rise in bookings from senior clients between February and March. "The reason for that is they've been vaccinated, they feel safe to travel again," he noted. "The world is their oyster. They're like where can I go now?" A recent survey from the American Society of Travel Advisers indicated that a number of Americans listed the prospect of travel as their chief reason for getting inoculated. Jim Moses at Road Scholar, which offers educational travel tours for older men and women, said "we've seen about a 50 percent increase in the numbers of people who are enrolling in programs. They're so excited."

The largest study of the associations between smoking and cardiovascular disease on cognitive function to date determined that both impair the ability to learn and memorize, reports ScienceDaily . The research published in Scientific Reports reviewed data on more than 70,000 individuals worldwide, and Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) Professor Matt Huentelman said the outcomes "suggest that smoking and cardiovascular disease impact verbal learning and memory throughout adulthood, starting as early as age 18. Smoking is associated with decreased learning and memory function in women, while cardiovascular is associated with decreased learning and memory function in men." Smoking and cardiovascular disease were found to worsen vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia, the most significant cause of cognitive decline next to Alzheimer's disease. "Our findings highlight the importance of considering biological sex in studying vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia," added TGen's Candace Lewis.

Managed Healthcare Executive reports that sleep disorders are often linked to breathing issues, like sleep disordered breathing (SDB) and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). SDB can lead to cognitive impairment, mood shifts, compromised quality of life, and elevated risk of stroke and comorbidities. Untreated OSA can lead to Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, atrial fibrillation, stroke, and other cardiovascular problems. Health leaders and healthcare professionals should consider sleep when providing "whole patient" care and understand the effect of breathing problems that often lie at the core of disrupted sleep. Nonpharmacological treatment of sleep issues among older adults includes relaxation techniques, improving sleep hygiene, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT is recommended to feature six to 10 sessions with a trained therapist that concentrate on cognitive beliefs and counterproductive behaviors that disrupt sleep. Relaxation methods include progressive muscle tensing and relaxing, guided imagery, paced diaphragmatic breathing, or meditation.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont announced that a basic agreement has been reached to avoid a strike at more than two dozen nursing communities in the state, reports CBS New York . Roughly 2,800 workers at 26 communities were expected to walk off Friday morning, citing wage concerns and dangerously low staffing levels. The agreement follows Lamont's revision of a proposal allocating $267 million in extra state funding for nursing communities, some of which will go toward salary hikes.