“We really need to know if something as simple as taking a baby aspirin each day can change the trajectory of mental and physical decline that we so often see in our older patients,” Dr. Michael L. Parchman of the University of Texas Health Science Center School of Medicine says in a statement.

Aspirin is known to prevent heart attacks and strokes in those with heart disease — a benefit that outweighs any risks associated with aspirin, such as bleeding — but how aspirin affects those without a history of cardiovascular disease is less certain.

“In the U.S., Australia and elsewhere, people are living longer, so identifying treatments to prolong life free of physical disability and memory problems is increasingly important,” Dr. Anne Murray of the University of Minnesota says in a statement. “Aspirin is a potentially useful drug, as it is cheap and widely available.”

The study will enroll 6,500 healthy U.S. adults age 70 and older and another 12,500 in Australia, Parchman says.

All eligible participants will be randomly assigned to take either low-dose aspirin or placebo daily for about five years.

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Senior author Dr. Paresh Dandona and first author Husam Ghanim of the University at Buffalo used a nutritional supplement containing 40 milligrams of resveratrol for the study involving 20 participants who were randomized into two groups of 10.

One group received the supplement, while the other group received a placebo once a day for six weeks. Fasting blood tests were conducted at the beginning of the study, week one, week three and week six.

The study, published online ahead of print in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, finds blood samples from those who took resveratrol showed suppression of the inflammatory protein tumor necrosis factor, which causes insulin resistance and the risk of developing diabetes. Blood samples from those who received the placebo showed no change in the pro-inflammatory markers.

Long-term inflammation affects development of type 2 diabetes, aging, heart disease and stroke, Dandona says.

“The product we used has only 20 percent resveratrol, so it is possible that something else in the preparation is responsible for the positive effects,” Dandona says.

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First author Dr. James Maxwell, a rheumatologist at the Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust and honorary senior clinical lecturer at the University of Sheffield, looked at 873 patients with rheumatoid arthritis and compared them with a control group of 1,004 people who did not have rheumatoid arthritis.

Study leader Gerry Wilson of the University of Sheffield asked both groups how frequently they had drunk alcohol in the month preceding the study. The study participants also completed a questionnaire, had X-rays and blood tests and an experienced research nurse examined their joints.

The study, published online in the journal Rheumatology, finds patients who had drunk alcohol most frequently had symptoms that were less severe than those who had never, or infrequently, consumed alcohol.

The X-rays showed less joint damage, the blood tests showed lower levels of inflammation and there was less joint pain, swelling and disability, the study says.

Non-drinkers were four times more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis than people who drank alcohol more than 10 days a month, Maxwell says.

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Experts at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia in Atlanta say those enrolled in a Medicare plan may have access to free programs administered by nurses and others to help manage chronic diseases and prevent acute episodes. Many only learn of these programs after hospitalization, the officials say.

“These programs are above and beyond those offered by original Medicare,” Krista Bowers, senior vice president of senior products, says in a statement. “It’s important for caregivers to know about them and encourage their loved ones to participate.”

Bowers suggests getting a copy of a member’s explanation of coverage from the insurer to find out what’s available.

For information about eligibility for another source of “extra help” — assistance with monthly prescription drug premiums, annual deductibles and prescription co-payments for low income seniors — go to www.socialsecurity.gov/extrahelp.

Even if a loved one doesn’t qualify for extra help from Social Security, the experts say there are resources available at the state and community levels. The Web site www.benefitscheckuprx.org, which counts Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia among its sponsors, tracks more than 1,550 benefit programs throughout the United States.

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The syndrome is considered the leading inherited cause of mental retardation and is the most common known single gene link to autism.

Dr. Charles Strom of the Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., says New York’s approval is significant because it means Quest’s new genetic analysis technique for Fragile X fulfills quality standards widely regarded in the lab industry as highly rigorous.

“Fragile X can be a devastating diagnosis, given the severe disability it causes many patients,” Strom says in a statement. “While it is highly prevalent, Fragile X is not widely tested for, due in part to technical limitations with conventional tests that our XSense technique largely surmounts.”

Strom and colleagues say they may be offering a laboratory test suitable for screening for Fragile X — especially in female carriers. Women unaffected or slightly affected by Fragile X syndrome are at risk of passing it to offspring.

The test currently in use — the Southern Blot DNA analysis — can take several days or weeks to perform while the Quest test results are reported in about a week for most patients, Strom says.

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Monika Sieverding of the University of Heidelberg and colleagues find men never tested for cancer were less likely to say they would be tested in the next year after learning 16 percent of German men had been screened for cancer in the past year.

However, the study, published in Psychological Science, found men never yet tested for cancer were much more likely to say they would have cancer testing in the coming year after learning 65 percent of German men — at some time in their life — had been tested for cancer.

“For us it is so interesting because this is very easy to change,” Sieverding says in a statement. “You cannot change attitudes easily, or the image of the average cancer screening patient, but it is easy to change the framing of the campaign.”

Sieverding and the other researchers approached men age 45 or older in the pedestrian areas of two large German cities and surveyed the men who had never been tested for cancer.

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The study, published in American Journal of Epidemiology, finds in six major cities — including Havana — obese seniors more likely to have significant trouble walking and doing daily tasks. The study suggests there is a need to prevent obesity in these populations.

“This greater prevalence of obesity is a new thing in Latin America and the Caribbean, the result of people moving from rural to urban areas and shifting their nutritional habits and other aspects of their lives to a more Western pattern,” lead author Soham Al Snih says in a statement. “At the same time, we’re seeing a substantial increase in life expectancy.”

Snih and colleagues analyzed data from a Pan-American Health Organization and National Institute on Aging survey that included more than 6,000 people age 65 and older in six major cities in Barbados, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay. A body mass index — a measure combining height and weight — of 30 or more was considered obese.

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“Today marks a step towards the achievement of a major objective of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s new strategy — stopping polio in Africa,” officials of the United Nations Children’s Fund says in a statement.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative was spearheaded by national governments, the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and UNICEF.

From March 2008 to July 2009, more than 100 children in several African countries became paralyzed by polio. During the outbreak, health officials used the Short Interval Additional Dose strategy, in which children are immunized at short intervals with type-specific vaccine to more rapidly raise population immunity levels.

The plan calls for the cessation by mid-2010 of all polio outbreaks and aims to build on success in key endemic countries, such as Nigeria, where the number of polio cases has dropped by more than 99 percent — from 312 cases last year to three in 2010, U.N. officials say.

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Geron Corp., headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif., says it will proceed with its trial of GRNOPC1, a stem-cell therapy intended to treat patients with acute spinal cord injury, a company release said Friday.

“We are pleased with the FDA’s decision to allow our planned clinical trial of GRNOPC1 in spinal cord injury to proceed,” Geron President and Chief Executive Officer Thomas B. Okarma said. “Our goals for the application of GRNOPC1 in subacute spinal cord injury are unchanged — to achieve restoration of spinal cord function by the injection of … progenitor (stem) cells directly into the lesion site of the patient’s injured spinal cord.”

“The neurosurgical community is ready to begin the clinical testing of this new approach to treating devastating spinal cord injury,” said Richard Fessler, professor of neurological surgery at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. “If found to be safe and effective, the therapy would provide a viable treatment option for thousands of patients who suffer severe spinal cord injuries each year.”

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A Northwestern University study of a group of subjects — including some “make believe” terrorists with knowledge of an upcoming terrorist “act” — was able to confirm, through measurements of brain waves, which of the subjects were in possession of “culpable” knowledge of the intended action, a university release said Friday.

The test measured P300 brain activity, electrical patterns in the cortex, to identify which subjects had knowledge of the plan, the release said.

Those patterns occur, researchers said, when meaningful information is presented to a person with “guilty knowledge.”

“Without any prior knowledge of the planned crime in our mock terrorism scenarios, we were able to identify 10 out of 12 terrorists and, among them, 20 out of 30 crime-related details,” J. Peter Rosenfeld, professor of psychology at Northwestern, said.

“The test was 83 percent accurate in predicting concealed knowledge, suggesting that our complex protocol could identify future terrorist activity,” he said.

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