Low-dose digoxin cut admissions 25 percent; midlife tracks split by ethnicity; HIV memory profiles divide three ways
Pooling three Dutch trials linked low-dose digoxin to a 25 percent drop in heart-failure hospitalizations; a San Antonio cohort tied cognitive decline to ethnicity-specific cardiovascular tracks; a memory game found three profiles among older adults with HIV.
Science··Midday
Low-dose digoxin cut hospitalizations by 25 percent
UMCG cardiologists randomized about 1,000 heart-failure patients at 43 Dutch centers to low-dose digoxin or placebo atop standard therapy for roughly three years. In that trial alone, cardiovascular death and worsening heart failure fell 19 percent in the digoxin arm, but the drop did not reach statistical significance on its own. Pooling the results with two earlier studies produced a statistically significant benefit: heart-failure hospitalizations fell by about 25 percent, including among patients already taking the four standard drugs. The findings were published in Nature Medicine and JAMA and presented at the ESC Heart Failure Congress in Barcelona. Digoxin has been used for centuries and costs less than ten cents per day, far below many newer heart-failure medicines costing several euros daily. The Netherlands counts more than 500,000 people living with heart failure, a burden researchers expect to grow.[1]
Activity and glucose left different tracks in San Antonio
UT Health San Antonio researchers followed 402 adults from the city, 52 percent Hispanic, with a mean age of 57.9 years, assessing cognition as many as four times with the Mini-Mental State Examination. Physical activity was associated with slower cognitive decline among Mexican American participants, while among non-Hispanic white participants the association ran through fasting glucose readings of 126 milligrams per deciliter or below. The observational cohort study, published July 23 in Alzheimer's & Dementia: Behavior & Socioeconomics of Aging, drew on participants from the San Antonio Heart Study and San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging. About 6.7 million people in the United States live with Alzheimer's disease, and recent estimates suggest nearly 40 percent of cases may connect to modifiable factors. The authors note the ethnic difference requires replication in larger samples.[2]
A memory game found three profiles in older adults with HIV
Northeastern University's Brain Game Center had 50 participants aged 50 and older play a custom side-scrolling memory game remotely. The astronaut character Lerner must reproduce sequences of coloured gems with a space laser after watching them flash. Among older adults living with HIV, performance patterns diverged clearly from participants without the virus, and the team identified three distinct cognitive profiles within the HIV-positive group. In earlier work on adults without HIV, lower inhibitory control predicted poorer game performance and a preference for non-gamified flashcards; among participants with HIV the pattern reversed, with some low-inhibitory-control volunteers still benefiting from the gamified version. HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder affects an estimated 30% to 50% of people living with the virus. The sample is small and the result does not deliver a diagnostic tool.[3]
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