The study examined the brain of a young man who died of a drug overdose after nine years of using Ecstasy. In the study, laboratory mice that were genetically programmed to be prone to Alzheimer's disease were treated with ibuprofen for six months. They had only half as many amyloid plaques as mice who were not treated with ibuprofen. In people, the accumulation of amyloid plaques in the brain continues for approximately 20 years before clinical symptoms of Alzheimer's disease appear. Therefore, reducing the number of amyloid plaque lesions in human patients by 50 percent could delay onset of the disease by as many as 10 years and might prevent as many as 75 percent of cases.
Smokers subject their families to secondhand smoke.
According to a study reported in Psychology Today , smokers' spouses consume an average of 3 g more of total fat per 1,000 calories than nonsmokers' spouses. Patients are likely not to survive more than 20 years after coronary artery bypass surgery unless they quit smoking. If that statement doesn't catch your patients' attention, maybe the fact that continued smoking is likely to necessitate repeat heart surgery or angioplasty will. These facts, according to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology , are the results of a study that followed 985 patients for an average of 20 years after bypass surgery. These results are the first to show the long-term effects of continued smoking on survival after bypass surgery.