| Epilepsy Behav. 2003 Dec;4(6):597-601. | Related Articles, Links |
When did neurologists and psychiatrists stop talking to each other?
Department of Neurological Sciences, Rush Medical College, Chicago, IL, USA. akanner@rush.edu
Patients with epilepsy have a significantly higher prevalence of psychiatric comorbid disorders involving depression, anxiety, psychotic, and attention deficit disorders. Accordingly, one would expect that psychiatrists would be actively involved in the evaluation and management of these patients. This, however, is hardly the case. Patients who undergo temporal lobectomies, for example, are known to experience postsurgical depression and occasionally psychotic disorders. Yet, most epilepsy centers in North America do not include a psychiatric evaluation as part of the presurgical work-up. Collaboration between epileptologists and psychiatrists is often sparse, despite the intimate relationship between psychiatric comorbidities and epilepsy. The purpose of this paper is to highlight this bizarre phenomenon and to identify some of the reasons behind it.
PMID: 14698691 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]
85). Method: Prospective data on 66 optimally healthy, oldest old adults (mean age 88.5) were analyzed using survival analysis. Results: In all, 12 men and 11 women reported exercising > 4 hours per week, and 38 participants developed CI (mean onset age 93; mean follow-up 4.7 years). The effect of exercise was modified by gender. In more active women (> 4 hours/week), the risk of CI was reduced by 88% (95% confidence interval 0.03, 0.41) compared to those less active. Less active women had 2 times the incidence rate of CI compared to less active men and almost 5 times the rate compared to active women. Discussion: This study demonstrates the beneficial effects of exercise on healthy brain aging even in the oldest old and emphasizes the importance of increasing PA in older women. 
