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HEALTH TIPS: Poor sleep may up Alzheimer’s in elderly

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Poor sleep among older adults has been associated with Alzheimer’s, suggesting that good sleep habits may help preserve brain health, finds a new study.

Studying mice and people, researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, found that sleep deprivation increases levels of the key Alzheimer’s protein, tau.
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And, in follow-up studies on mice, the team has shown that sleeplessness accelerates the spread of toxic clumps of tau, a harbinger of brain damage and decisive step along the path to dementia through the brain.

These study indicated that lack of sleep alone helps drive the disease.

Tau is normally found in the brain — even in healthy people — but under certain conditions it can clump together into tangles that injure nearby tissue and presage cognitive decline.

“The interesting thing about this study is that it suggests that real-life factors such as sleep might affect how fast the disease spreads through the brain,” said the researchers, including David Holtzman, MD from the varsity.

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This study shows that sleep disruption causes the damaging protein tau to increase rapidly and to spread over time, Holtzman added.

To find out whether lack of sleep was directly forcing tau levels upward, the team measured tau levels in mice and people with normal and disrupted sleep.

Findings, published in the journal Science, showed that tau levels in the fluid surrounding brain cells were about twice as high at night, when the animals were more awake and active, than during the day, when the mice dozed more frequently.

Similarly, disturbing the mice’s rest during the day caused daytime tau levels to double.

Much the same effect was seen in people indicating that a sleepless night caused tau levels to rise by about 50 per cent, the researchers discovered.

Furthermore, staying up all night enables people sleep more the next chance they get in addition to being stressed and cranky.

The mice too, rebounded from a sleepless day by sleeping more later.

Hence, staying awake for prolonged periods causes tau levels to rise. Altogether, tau is routinely released during waking hours by the normal business of thinking and doing, and then this release is decreased during sleep allowing tau to be cleared away, the findings suggested.

Corona

Covid toll in Karnataka is a worrying sign for state government

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Even though Karnataka recorded the lowest number of Covid deaths in April since the virus struck first in 2020, the state is recording a rise in the positivity rate (1.50 per cent). Five people died from the Covid infections in April as per the statistics released by the state health department. In March, the positivity rate stood around 0.53 per cent. In the first week of April it came down to 0.38 per cent, second week registered 0.56 per cent, third week it rose to 0.79 per cent and by end of April the Covid positivity rate touched 1.19 per cent.

on an average 500 persons used to succumb everyday in the peak of Covid infection, as per the data. Health experts said that the mutated Coronavirus is losing its fierce characteristics as vaccination, better treatment facilities and awareness among the people have contributed to the lesser number of Covid deaths.

During the 4th and 6th of April two deaths were reported in Bengaluru, one in Gadag district on April 8, two deaths were reported from Belagavi and Vijayapura on April 30. The first Covid case was reported in the state in March 2020 and three Covid deaths were recorded in the month. In the following month 21 people became victims to the deadly virus, and May 2020 recorded 22 deaths. The death toll recorded everyday after May crossed three digits. However, the third wave, which started in January 2

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