August 17, 2004 ALBUQUERQUE (AP) -- Two researchers are trying to find out whether chronic bronchitis and emphysema might also cause memory problems.
Paula Meek, a nursing professor at the University of New Mexico, and Kathie Insel, an assistant nursing professor at the University of Arizona, want to find out how a family of diseases called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, affects patients.
Lung and respiratory diseases hurt the body's ability to get oxygen to the brain. That was studied in the 1980s, resulting in oxygen treatments being added to patient care.
However, Insel said the diseases also might cause carbon dioxide to build up in the blood -- and that hasn't been studied. She said finding out if that's happening could lead to more effective drug treatments in the future.
"We don't know, but we think the diseases may have long-term implications for some COPDers, like accelerated aging," Meek said. "A patient with COPD might be 60 years old but parts of their brain and memory function can look more like an 80-year-old."
Insel said such memory problems are not like Alzheimer's disease, but are related to processing information in a person's short-term memory."
Remembering a seven-digit phone number wouldn't be a severe problem, for example. But processing that number -- putting the digits in order from smallest to largest -- might be increasingly difficult for people with the diseases, she said.
"What might be happening is that most of the time the patient's oxygen levels are fine, but a few times a week they might drop and rebound," Meek said. "That could cause the damage to parts of the brain that handle judgment and memory."
Meek notes patients with memory problems could have a harder time with treatment.
"People with COPD sometimes have problems remembering to take their medications and learning how to take them," she said.
A $750,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health Institute of Nursing Research is funding the study.
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