Health News - Tuesday, April 10, 2007
The centres of the brain responsible for learning, memory and emotion may play a key role in putting the heart under strain in times of stress. UK scientists have shown that signals from these areas can destabilise the cardiac muscle of someone who already has heart disease. This, the research suggests, can trigger potentially fatal abnormalities in the heart's rhythms. The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
It has long been known that stress triggers increased activity in the heart. This is designed to maximise blood flow, so that the body is primed to take quick action. However, it had been thought that this change was due to signals from more primitive areas of the brain. In the latest study researchers at University College London and the Brighton and Sussex Medical School studied 10 patients with specific heart conditions. Continue reading
he proportion of severely obese Americans -- those with a body mass index of 40 or more -- increased by 50 percent from 2000 to 2005, twice as fast as the increase in moderate obesity, a new study finds. During that same period, the proportion of overweight people (BMI of 30 or more) increased by 24 percent, and the proportion of those with a BMI of 50 or more increased by 75 percent. In the past 20 years, the largest percentage increases have occurred in the heaviest weight groups, the RAND Corporation study said.
Body mass index, or BMI, is a ratio of weight to height. A typical severely obese man weighs 300 pounds at a height of 5 feet 10 inches, while a typical severely obese woman weighs 250 pounds at a height of 5 feet 4 inches. "The proportion of people at the high end of the weight scale continues to increase at a brisk rate despite increased public attention on the risks of obesity and the increased use of drastic weight loss strategies, such as bariatric surgery," report author Roland Sturm, a RAND economist, said in a prepared statement. Continue reading
People who use statin drugs are less likely to die of influenza and chronic bronchitis, according to a study that shows yet another unexpected benefit of the cholesterol-lowering medications. Their study of more than 76,000 people showed that those who had taken statins for at least 90 days had a much lower risk of dying from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD, the technical name for emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
Patients on statins also had a lower risk of dying from influenza or pneumonia, the researchers reported on Monday. Statins -- which include Pfizer Inc.'s $10 billion-a-year Lipitor, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s Pravachol and Merck and Co. Inc.'s Zocor -- are the world's best-selling drugs, taken by millions to reduce the risk of heart attack. The new study supports a theory proposed last year that statin drugs might help patients with H5N1 avian influenza, which some studies suggest kills by causing an immune system overreaction called a cytokine storm. Continue reading