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Single or unhappily married men may have an elevated risk of fatal stroke in the coming decades, according to a large study presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2010.

The findings are based on earlier work in which researchers examined 10,059 civil servants and municipal workers (average age 49) who participated in the Israeli Ischemic Heart Disease Study in 1963. Using the national death registry and other records, researchers tracked the fate of the men through 1997, the last year for which underlying causes of death had been coded.

Among the men who in 1963 were single, 8.4 percent died of stroke in the following 34 years, compared with 7.1 percent of the married men. Considering age at death and adjusting for socioeconomic status, obesity, blood pressure, smoking habits and family size, as well as existing diabetes and heart disease at the time of the earlier survey, single men had a 64 percent higher risk of fatal stroke than did married men. That figure is comparable to the risk of fatal stroke faced by men with diabetes, said Uri Goldbourt, Ph.D., author of the study.

Furthermore, in 1965, the married men had been asked to evaluate their marriages as very successful, quite successful, not so successful, or unsuccessful. In an analysis of the 3.6 percent of men who had reported dissatisfaction in their marriage, adjusted risk of a fatal stroke was also 64 percent higher, compared with men who considered their marriages very successful.

Researchers at McMaster University have developed a cocktail of ingredients that forestalls major aspects of the aging process.

The findings are published in the current issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine.

"As we all eventually learn, ageing diminishes our mind, fades our perception of the world and compromises our physical capacity," says David Rollo, associate professor of biology at McMaster. "Declining physical activity—think of grandparents versus toddlers—is one of the most reliable expressions of ageing and is also a good indicator of obesity and general mortality risk."

The study found that a complex dietary supplement powerfully offsets this key symptom of ageing in old mice by increasing the activity of the cellular furnaces that supply energy—or mitochondria—and by reducing emissions from these furnaces—or free radicals—that are thought to be the basic cause of ageing itself.

A forensic pathologist thinks some people's embarrassment about taking herbal medicines can leave them vulnerable to taking a lethal cocktail of drugs, the ABC reports.

Professor Roger Byard of Adelaide University has published a research paper on the dangers of herbal medicines when taken in large quantities, injected or combined with use of prescription drugs.

He has found it can lead to serious illnesses, worsen pre-existing conditions or cause death.

Professor Byard says people are often reluctant to tell their doctor they are taking herbal medicines for fear of ridicule, but it can be a fatal mistake.

"Although obviously a number of herbal substances are quite safe, you don't know what's in the package sometimes and there may be interactions, so it is important to talk to your doctor," he said.

A British and Dutch team of scientists has identified for the first time definitive variants associated with biological ageing in humans. The team analyzed more than 500,000 genetic variations across the entire human genome to identify the variants which are located near a gene called TERC.

British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiology at the University of Leicester Professor Nilesh Samani, of the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, who co-led the project explained that there are two forms of ageing – chronological ageing i.e. how old you are in years and biological ageing whereby the cells of some individuals are older (or younger) than suggested by their actual age.

He said: "There is accumulating evidence that the risk of age-associated diseases including heart disease and some types of cancers are more closely related to biological rather than chronological age.

"What we studied are structures called telomeres which are parts of one's chromosomes. Individuals are born with telomeres of certain length and in many cells telomeres shorten as the cells divide and age. Telomere length is therefore considered a marker of biological ageing.

"In this study what we found was that those individuals carrying a particular genetic variant had shorter telomeres i.e. looked biologically older. Given the association of shorter telomeres with age-associated diseases, the finding raises the question whether individuals carrying the variant are at greater risk of developing such diseases"

Scientists have been able to reach into the mind of a brain-damaged man and communicate with his thoughts, reports Fergus Walsh Medical correspondent, for BBC News.

The research, carried out in the UK and Belgium, involved a new brain scanning method.

Awareness was detected in three other patients previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative state.

The study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that scans can detect signs of awareness in patients thought to be closed off from the world.Patients in a vegetative state are awake, not in a coma, but have no awareness because of severe brain damage.

The scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which shows brain activity in real time.They asked patients and healthy volunteers to imagine playing tennis while they were being scanned. In each of the volunteers this stimulated activity in the pre-motor cortex, part of the brain which deals with movement.

This also happened in four out of 23 of the patients presumed to be in a vegetative state.

A spot of sunbathing may be just the thing to lift a man's libido, say experts after an Austrian study finds testosterone is boosted by vitamin D, the BBC reports.

The bulk of this essential nutrient is made by the skin on exposure to sunlight. The rest comes from the diet.

A study in Clinical Endocrinology journal of 2,299 men found those with enough of the vitamin had more of the male sex hormone than those with less.

Blood levels of both dipped in the winter and peaked in the summer.

Adults aged over 70 years who are classified as overweight are less likely to die over a ten year period than adults who are in the 'normal' weight range, according to a new study published today in the Journal of The American Geriatrics Society.

Researchers looked at data taken over a decade among more than 9,200 Australian men and women aged between 70 and 75 at the beginning of the study, who were assessed for their health and lifestyle as part of a study into healthy aging. The paper sheds light on the situation in Australia, which is ranked the third most obese country, behind the United States and the United Kingdom.

The study began in 1996 and recruited 4,677 men and 4,563 women. The participants were followed for ten years or until their death, whichever was sooner, and factors such as lifestyle, demographics, and health were measured. The research uncovered that mortality risk was lowest for participants with a BMI classified as overweight, with the risk of death reduced by 13% compared with normal weight participants. The benefits were only seen in the overweight category not in those people who are obese.

Forgot where you put your car keys? Having trouble recalling your colleague's name? If so, this may be a symptom of subjective cognitive impairment (SCI), the earliest sign of cognitive decline marked by situations such as when a person recognizes they can't remember a name like they used to or where they recently placed important objects the way they used to. Studies have shown that SCI is experienced by between one-quarter and one-half of the population over the age of 65. A new study, published in the January 11, 2010, issue of the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia, finds that healthy older adults reporting SCI are 4.5 times more likely to progress to the more advanced memory-loss stages of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia than those free of SCI. 

The long-term study completed by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center tracked 213 adults with and without SCI over an average of seven years, with data collection taking nearly two decades. Further cognitive decline to MCI or dementia was observed in 54 percent of SCI persons, while only in 15 percent of persons free of SCI. 

A study published in the January 13, 2010 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience links a loss of smell function in Alzheimer's disease (AD) model animals with amyloid (protein) accumulation in the brain, a distinguishing hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. Research conducted by NYU Langone Medical Center suggests that olfactory dysfunction, a common symptom of AD, may serve as an early diagnostic tool for the disease.

The formation of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are believed to contribute to the degradation of the neurons in the brain and the subsequent symptoms of AD. In this newly published study, NYU Langone scientists used genetically engineered mice, which developed amyloids in their brains, reflecting a progressive Alzheimer's disease pathology similar to humans. They found that Alzheimer's disease amyloid pathology occurs first in a region of the mouse brain responsible for smelling—which is directly above their noses. This pathology also coincided with the animals having abnormal abilities to smell. The mice with a high concentration of amyloid in their brains had to sniff odors longer to "learn" them than mice with less amyloid. They also had problems differentiating between odors.

As the article in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests, since the behavioral symptoms of AD often occur early in life, it is possible that this new olfactory method, looking at olfactory perception across multiple presentations of the same odor, may be advantageous in early detection of Alzheimer's -- prior to substantial degeneration of the brain.