WEDNESDAY, April 2 (HealthDay News) -- The continuing use of antipsychotic drugs provides no cognitive or neuropsychiatric benefit for Alzheimer's patients, a British study concludes.

Researchers at King's College Hospital in London studied 165 patients who were already being treated with antipsychotic drugs. The patients were divided into two groups -- one continued treatment with the drugs, while the other group stopped treatment.

The patients were assessed six and 12 months later, and the researchers found no differences between the two groups in terms of cognitive decline or in the number of neuropsychiatric problems.

Patients with severe neuropsychiatric problems at the start of the study may have derived some benefit from continued drug therapy, but this difference was not statistically significant, the researchers said.

While these findings suggest that continued use of antipsychotic drugs offers no benefits for Alzheimer's patients, this was a small study, the study authors noted. More research is needed to improve management of these patients, they added.

The study appears in the cuurent issue of PLoS Medicine.

Almost all older dementia patients have some neuropsychiatric symptoms, such as agitation, aggression and psychosis. Antipsychotics are often used to manage or control these symptoms, but there are safety concerns, including increased risk of stroke, sedation, edema, chest infections and parkinsonism. Prolonged use of antipsychotics may also lead to a worsening of cognitive decline.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more about Alzheimer's medications.

TUESDAY, April 1 (HealthDay News) -- People up to the age of 75 should be allowed to donate corneas for transplant, says a U.S. National Eye Institute-funded study.

The researchers found that tissue from donors aged 66 to 75 had the same five-year success rate (86 percent) as corneas from donors aged 12 to 65.

The research, coordinated by the Jaeb Center for Health Research in Tampa, Fla., included 1,101 patients, aged 40 to 80, enrolled by 105 surgeons at 80 sites. The patients were followed for five years after corneal transplant. A transplant was considered a failure if a repeat corneal transplant was needed or if the transplanted cornea was cloudy for at least three months.

The findings were published in the April issue of Ophthalmology.

This is "the largest study of its type on corneal transplantation ever done. Its size and five-year patient follow-up, along with a simple trial design, have provided us with clear and important insights into contemporary transplantation," study co-chairman Dr. Mark J. Mannis, professor and chairman of the department of ophthalmology at the University of California, Davis, said in a prepared statement.

In the United States, more than 33,000 corneal transplants are done each year. For the past 10 years, there's been an adequate supply of donor corneas, the study authors noted. However, supply could become a problem due to new U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations that require additional screening and testing of potential donors for contagious diseases, registration of eye banks, more detailed records and labels, and stricter quarantine procedures.

In addition, some surgeons are reluctant to use corneas from older people, so many eye banks only accept corneas from donors aged 65 or younger.

The study authors said the use of corneas from older donors could expand the donor pool by as much as 20 percent to 35 percent.

"Surgeons and patients now have scientific evidence that older donor corneas are suitable for transplantation," study co-chairman Dr. Edward J. Holland, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Cincinnati and director of the Cornea Service at the Cincinnati Eye Institute, said in a prepared statement. "Further, when corneas are readily available, transplant procedures can be scheduled more efficiently, allowing both surgeons and patients to plan for them."

The findings have come at a good time, according to Dr. Paul A. Sieving, director of the National Eye Institute.

"The pressure on eye banks to provide corneas is increasing. The results of this study will expand the available donor pool and should persuade surgeons to use corneas from older donors. These changes will greatly benefit the growing number of individuals who need corneal transplants," Sieving said in a prepared statement.

More information

The Eye Bank Association of America has more about corneal transplant  .

FRIDAY, Feb. 15 (HealthDay News) -- There's new evidence that getting along with others is more than a key to pleasant human interaction. It also appears to be good for your health.

Researchers who studied a survey of almost 700 older adults found that those who got along with their relatives, friends and neighbors were less likely to report health problems and physical limitations.

The findings don't prove a cause-and-effect relationship between social life and health. Still, "the take-home message is that conflict in your life may have important impacts on your physical health," said study lead author Jason T. Newsom, associate professor at the Portland State University School of Community Health in Oregon.

There's nothing really new about a supposed link between attitude and health, but Newsom said his study was unique, because it looked specifically at interactions between people.

Newsom and his colleagues looked at the results of a multi-year national survey of people aged 65 to 90. A total of 666 people completed the survey, in which researchers asked them questions about their lives and their health.

Many of the questions were designed to reveal whether the study participants were prone to have "negative social interactions" with other people, Newsom said. The questions asked whether "people have interfered or meddled in your personal matters, have they acted unsympathetically or been critical of you. We asked them in a very general way," he said.

The survey didn't ask whether the participants were the instigators of negative encounters -- by being crabby or cranky, for instance -- or the victims of others who made their lives difficult.

The researchers found that those who reported more negative social encounters suffered greater declines in health.

"What we suspect is that there's some impact on the immune system, but there are other kinds of things that might be happening as well," Newsom said. "It may be that when there's a great deal of interpersonal conflict going on in someone's life, they're not able to take care of medical conditions as well."

The findings were published in the journal Health Psychology.

The study authors noted that their research had limitations. It only looked at senior citizens and relied on their own estimates of their health status instead of physical examinations, for one, and only examined changes over two years.

Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, director of the Ohio State University College of Medicine's Division of Health Psychology, said the new study came from "a group of excellent investigators." But, she added, she would like to have seen more analysis of whether the study participants were depressed.

"When people are blue, they tend to be overly sensitive to negative interactions, to feel that others are often unsympathetic -- and then they behave in ways that tend to elicit even more negative behaviors from others," Kiecolt-Glaser said. "They're cranky and critical and cantankerous. If you're seeing the world through dark-colored glasses, you're more likely to focus on how unsympathetic or insensitive other people act toward you, and there's a big element of self-fulfilling prophecy."

Newsom acknowledged that it's no easy task to make people get along better. But, he said, studies have shown that one approach -- conflict-resolution training -- actually works.

More information

To learn more about conflict-resolution training, visit the University of Wisconsin  .