ArcaMax

People with Down syndrome have the highest prevalence for developing Alzheimer's disease. Roughly 30% are diagnosed with the neurological condition by their 50s. They have over a 90% chance of developing dementia from Alzheimer's in their lifetime.

Landmark Food and Drug Administration approval of anti-amyloid drugs like lecanemab and donanemab, however, may not offer them any hope. A small study using postmortem brain tissue of people with Alzheimer's found that the drug extensively bound to brain blood vessels, raising significant safety concerns about using it in living patients.

The findings underscore the need for clinical trials, but people with Down syndrome have historically been excluded from this kind of Alzheimer's research. Of the more than 18,000 people who participated in clinical trials for drugs like lecanemab and donanemab, none had Down syndrome.

Body of Knowledge

Teeth, although considered part of the skeletal system, are not counted as bones. They play a crucial role in digestion and communication but have distinct characteristics that set them apart from the rest of the skeletal structure.

Get Me That, Stat!

The average adjusted cost of an inpatient stay at a community hospital in 2019, according to latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, was $14,101. A little more than 5% of Americans aged 1-64 experience a hospital stay each year. The most frequent diagnoses are septicemia, heart failure, osteoarthritis, pneumonia and type 2 diabetes.

Counts

2 -- Percentage decrease in births in U.S. in 2022-2023

3 -- Percentage decrease in general fertility rate in U.S. during the same period

Source: CDC National Vital Statistics System

Doc Talk

Muscae volitantes: "Eye floaters" are those little, transparent threads that you see floating across your eyeball. Generally, they are bits of drifting protein in your eye.

Mania of the Week

Choreomania: An obsession with dancing. Not to be confused with balletomania, which is a particular passion for ballet.

Never Say 'Diet'

The Major League Eating speed-eating record for rice balls is 20 pounds in 30 minutes, held by Takeru Kobayashi, who was subsequently rolled away.

Food for Thought

Titanium dioxide is used as a color enhancer in sunscreens, paper, plastics and cosmetics because it makes things whiter. It's used for the same reason in candies, toothpaste, artificial creamers and soups, listed as an "artificial color."

Best Medicine

First guy: "I asked my grandfather why he doesn't have life insurance."

Second guy: "What did he say?"

First guy: "That he wanted me to be truly sad when he's gone."

Observation

"My favorite machine at the gym is the television." -- Anonymous

Medical History

This week in 1958, Dr. Ake Senning implanted the first internal heart pacemaker. Earlier in the year, inventor Rune Elmqvist had debuted the device, designed to be implanted in a subcutaneous pouch in a patient suffering from cardiac disease.

It used only two transistors and was the size of a hockey puck. The apparatus sent pulses to the cardiac muscle to establish normal and regular contractions. Senning carried out the first pacemaker installation at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Although the prototype worked for only three hours, the recipient would receive 26 more iterations over the next 40 years and live to the age of 86. He would die from melanoma skin cancer.

Perishable Publications

Many, if not most, published research papers have titles that defy comprehension. They use specialized jargon, complex words and opaque phrases like "nonlinear dynamics." Sometimes they don't, yet they're still hard to figure out. Here's an actual title of actual published research study: "Pair of lice lost or parasites regained."

The 2007 paper, published in BMC Biology, looked at the evolutionary history of anthropoid primate lice. That is, the tiny, sucking pests that have cohabitated with humans and other primates for millions of years.

Sum Body

Five body parts found in the dictionary under words not called body parts:

1. Hypochondriac derives from hypochondrium, a region of the upper abdomen encapsulating organs like the liver, gallbladder and spleen. It was once thought that ailments involving these organs were the cause of melancholic feelings or ill health.

2. Recalcitrant means to be extremely obstinate or uncooperative. The adjective derives from the earlier verb "recalcitrate," which meant to kick out angrily like a stubborn horse. That word derives from "calx," Latin for "heel."

3. To be supercilious is to behave or look as though one thinks they are superior to others. The supercilium is the region of the forehead containing the eyebrows. Supercilious behavior is associated with raised eyebrows.

4. The name for the dates you eat is derived from the Greek word for finger -- daktylos -- because the date palm's fruits resemble human fingers.

5. A glossary is literally a collection of glosses: short annotations or explanatory comments once written along or between lines of text to clarify or translate contents. Glosses derive their name, via Latin, from the Greek word "glossa," meaning "language" or "tongue."

Last Words

"Let us work together to make that future a place we want to visit. Be brave, be curious, be determined, overcome the odds. It can be done." -- English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) The lines by Hawking, who could only speak through a speech-generating device due to a degenerative neurological condition, were recorded and beamed after his death into the nearest black hole, a focus of his seminal research.

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To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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