From WisPolitics.com/WisBusiness.com …
— A new study led by UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs suggests additional education can reduce the risk of dementia, with greater benefits for those with genetic predisposition for the disease.
The university today announced the findings, which are based on how a change to British law in the 1970s impacted health decades later. While scientists had already known those with more education had lower dementia risk, this research was able to pinpoint the effect of the schooling itself.
They did so by looking at a 1972 education reform in England, Scotland and Wales that resulted in students staying in school one year longer — leaving at age 16 rather than 15. Students born on or after Sept. 1, 1957, had to remain in school for an additional year.
Scientists then tracked the outcomes for those on either side of that date through age 65, based on hospital records and other data. They found those who had to stay in school for another year were less likely to develop dementia than those who were born before the cutoff date.
Silvia Barcellos, an associate professor of population health sciences and public affairs with the school, says it’s been difficult to know if the actual schooling was responsible for the dementia differences seen among those with more education.
“By taking advantage of this school reform, we can separate the effect of education from many of the other factors that differ across people,” she said in a statement.
Leandro Carvalho, an associate professor of economics at study partner University of Southern California, says “this is a hopeful finding” even for those who know they have a higher genetic risk of dementia. That’s because researchers found the trend held even for those facing such risk.
“Genes help shape disease risk, but they do not necessarily determine the outcome,” Carvalho said. “Our results suggest that experiences and circumstances that can be changed over the course of life may influence whether inherited susceptibility ultimately translates into disease.”
— Madison-based EnsoData is touting a new certification for its sleep study software from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, calling it an “important step” for the company.
The startup recently announced its EnsoSleep AP scoring software for in-home and laboratory sleep studies is the first software to receive full “autoscoring certification” from AASM. The group independently validated the platform’s performance across four scoring domains: sleep staging, respiratory events, arousals and leg movements.
EnsoSleep analyzes signals from in-lab and at-home sleep studies to assist clinicians in evaluating sleep and diagnosing sleep disorders.
“This milestone reflects the depth of EnsoSleep’s capabilities and a decades-long commitment to clinical quality and real-world accuracy,” EnsoData co-founder and Chief AI Officer Sam Rusk said in a statement. “For clinicians, it provides another reason to integrate AI into their workflow and enables more time to focus on patients.”
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