Listeria Food Poisoning Hits Elderly, Moms-to-Be Hardest: CDC

Most recent cases linked to soft cheeses, produce

By Robert Preidt

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, June 4 (HealthDay News) -- Soft cheese and raw produce have caused many recent listeria outbreaks in the United States, and at least 90 percent of cases typically occur among seniors, pregnant women, newborns and people with weakened immune systems, a new U.S. health report says.

Pregnant women are 10 times more likely to get this serious form of food poisoning than others in the general population, and the risk is 24 times higher among pregnant Hispanic women, according to the Vital Signs report, released Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

People aged 65 and older are four times more likely to get listeria infection than those in the general population, said the CDC researchers who analyzed 2009-2011 data on listeria illness rates and foods associated with listeria outbreaks.

"Listeria strikes hard at pregnant women, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems, sending many to the hospital and causing miscarriage or death in as many as one in five," CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden said in an agency news release.

"We need to develop new cutting-edge molecular technologies to help us link illnesses and outbreaks to foods faster to prevent illness and death, which is why the President's budget proposes investing in new tools to advance this work," Frieden added.

The findings highlight the need to educate people about how to prevent listeria infections, the report stated.

More than 1,650 listeria illnesses were reported to the CDC during the three-year study period, the report authors found.

About 20 percent of the infections caused a death, most of which occurred among seniors or as miscarriages or stillbirths. Pregnant women with listeria infections often have only mild symptoms or a fever, but their infections can result in miscarriage, premature labor and serious illness or death in their newborns, the report noted.

Twelve listeria outbreaks sickened 224 people in 38 states over the study period. These outbreaks included the large 2011 outbreak linked to cantaloupes from one farm. Of the 10 outbreaks with an identified food source, six were linked to soft cheese (mostly Mexican-style cheeses) and two to raw produce (whole cantaloupe and pre-cut celery).

Improved technology and regulatory changes led to a 25 percent drop in rates of listeria illness in the United States between the 1990s and early 2000s, largely because of changes affecting meat and poultry. But declining rates have since leveled off, and this report shows the need for additional measures to further reduce consumers' risk of developing listeria illness from foods, the CDC authors noted.

No one should drink unpasteurized milk or eat soft cheese made from unpasteurized milk, and hot dogs should be cooked until they're steaming hot, the CDC states. Also, proper cleaning, storage and refrigeration can help prevent listeria outbreaks.

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Isolation, Loneliness May Raise Death Risk for Elderly

Study found lack of social contact a bigger predictor of early death than just feeling alone

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, March 25 (HealthDay News) -- Elderly people who are socially isolated and lonely may be at greater risk of early death, British researchers report.

Lack of social contact might be an even bigger risk factor than loneliness, they added. Why, however, isolation is such a powerful predictor of death isn't clear.

"Social contact is a fundamental aspect of human existence. The scientific evidence is that being socially isolated is probably bad for your health, and may lead to the development of serious illness and a reduced life span," said lead researcher Andrew Steptoe, director of the Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care at University College London.

There is also research suggesting that loneliness has similar associations with poor health, he said.

"In many ways, social isolation and loneliness are two sides of the same coin. Social isolation indicates a lack of contact with friends, relatives and organizations, while loneliness is a subjective experience of lack of companionship and social contact," Steptoe said.

The investigators found that social isolation was a more consistent predictor of not surviving than was loneliness, and was related to greater risk of dying even after age and background health were taken into account, he said.

One expert said the findings were a little unexpected.

"You would think that loneliness would compound the risk for mortality, as opposed to just isolation -- it's a bit of a surprise," said Dr. Bryan Bruno, acting chair of psychiatry at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, who was not involved with the study.

However, Steptoe explained, "Knowing about how lonely participants felt did not add to our ability to predict future mortality. This is not to say that loneliness is unimportant, or that we should not strive to reduce loneliness in older men and women," he said.

"But, we need to keep an eye on the social connections of older people, since maintaining social contacts among seniors and reducing isolation may be particularly important for their future survival," Steptoe added.

Bruno agreed that isolation is a significant factor in both reduced quality of life and mortality. "It is a difficult, challenging problem," he said.

"For my elderly patients, I often do a lot of education about the risk associated with being isolated and encourage them to spend as much time with other people as possible, whether it be family, friends or joining groups, community organizations or doing volunteer work," Bruno noted.

The report was published March 25 in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

To look at the risks of loneliness and social isolation on dying, Steptoe's team collected data on 6,500 men and women aged 52 and older who took part in the English Longitudinal Study of Aging in 2004.

People who had limited contact with family or friends or community were classified as socially isolated. The researchers used a questionnaire to assess loneliness, which was described in background information in the study as a person's "dissatisfaction with the frequency and closeness of their social contacts, or the discrepancy between the relationships they have and the relationships they would like to have."

During nearly eight years of follow-up, 918 people died and social isolation and loneliness both predicted an early death.

Social isolation, however, increased the risk of dying regardless of one's health and other factors, while loneliness increased the risk of dying only among those with underlying mental or physical problems, the researchers found.

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Hearing Loss Linked to Mental Decline in Elderly

Jan. 22, 2013 -- Hearing loss and mental decline are two common conditions of aging, and now a new study finds that they may be related.

Older people with hearing deficits were more likely than those with normal hearing to develop problems with memory and thinking over the course of the study.

On average, the study participants with hearing issues had significant mental impairments three years earlier than those without them.

About two-thirds of adults over the age of 70 have some degree of hearing loss. 

And the number of people with dementia is projected to double over the next two decades as the population ages.

The researchers now hope to study whether hearing aids can slow mental decline in the elderly.

Otologist and epidemiologist Frank R. Lin, MD, PhD, led the study. He says only about 15% of people who need hearing aids get them. Lin is an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

“Our findings emphasize just how important it is for physicians to discuss hearing with their patients and to be proactive in addressing any hearing declines over time,” he says.

The investigation included close to 2,000 men and women in their 70s and 80s who took part in an aging and health study that began in the late 1990s.

Hearing was tested in year five of the study, and the men and women underwent a series of tests over the next six years to assess declines in memory and thinking.

The men and women with hearing loss showed evidence of these declines 30% to 40% faster than the people with normal hearing. And those people with more hearing loss had steeper declines in mental function.

The study was published online in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

While it did not address how age-related hearing loss may worsen problems with memory or thinking, Lin says there are several theories.

One theory is that the social isolation common among people with untreated hearing loss leads to mental decline. Previous research has identified loneliness as a risk factor for such decline, he says.

Another theory is the idea that the working memory is limited with respect to the amount of information it can hold and the operations it can perform.

“The job of the inner ear is to take in sounds and encode them with accurate fidelity before the signal goes to the brain for decoding, but with hearing loss the brain has a very hard time doing that,” Lin says. “If the brain constantly has to expend more resources to decode sound, this may come at a cognitive cost.”

Neurologist and Alzheimer’s researcher Marc L. Gordon, MD, calls the research compelling, but he says more studies are needed to confirm that hearing loss has a direct impact on mental decline and to understand the reasons for the link.

He adds that the study emphasizes the importance of addressing not just hearing loss but also vision loss in the elderly.

“This reinforces the notion that evaluating and treating these sensory impairments may be even more important for an aging person’s overall well-being than we have known,” he says.

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Depression in Elderly May Predict Dementia

Dec. 31, 2012 -- Depression is common among older people who go on to develop Alzheimer’s disease, leading to widespread speculation that it may be one possible cause for age-related dementias.

Now, a new study suggests that rather than being a cause of memory decline, depression in older people may be an early symptom of dementia.

When researchers evaluated 2,000 elderly New Yorkers for depression and then followed them, they found that depression accompanied memory declines but did not necessarily come first.

Having memory problems that are not severe enough to be diagnosed as dementia, but that are more pronounced than the changes associated with normal aging, is known as mild cognitive impairment. Many people with MCI develop dementia, but some do not.

The new research shows that having mild cognitive impairment along with depression doubled the risk of developing full-blown dementia.

But researcher Jose A. Luchsinger, MD, MPH, of Columbia University Medical Center, says depression appears to be a symptom that accompanies age-related memory loss, such as mild cognitive impairment, rather than a separate risk factor for it.

It also means that depression among the elderly should be recognized as a possible early warning sign of age-related memory decline.

The study was published online today in the journal Archives of Neurology.

“When depression and memory complaints occur together in the elderly it is often assumed that the memory problems are caused by the depression,” Luchsinger says. “The thinking is often that by treating the depression the memory problems will go away, but this may not be the case.”

He says older people who are depressed and have memory complaints should be evaluated for mild cognitive impairment or other early signs of dementia.

Neurologist Gayatri Devi, MD, of New York City’s Lenox Hill Hospital, says it makes sense that older people with early memory loss would be more vulnerable to depression.

“Especially in the early stages when people realize that something is not quite right but they don’t really understand what is happening, it is natural to become depressed,” she says.

Devi agrees that depression and memory loss in older patients are too often lumped together instead of being evaluated separately.

“Depression may be related to (memory) decline or it may be totally unrelated,” she says. “From a clinical perspective it is important to understand this. If a patient comes to me in her 70s or 80s with no history of depression and no clear reason for depression, such as the loss of a spouse or a child, I will certainly consider cognitive loss as a possible reason and do the appropriate tests.”

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