Health News - Monday, February 12, 2007
There is new evidence directly linking exposure to secondhand smoke with an increased risk for heart disease. Even low-level indirect exposure to cigarette smoke was associated with a significant rise in heart disease risk in the research conducted by researchers from the U.K.'s University of Nottingham.
The study is the first to directly measure secondhand smoke exposure through levels of a nicotine byproduct in the blood. Previous studies have relied on participants' recall of exposure. Compared with people in the study with no detectable exposures to nicotine, those with low- and high exposure levels also had significantly higher levels of two important markers of heart disease risk. Continue reading
Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG said it has mapped the genome of a large group of type-2 diabetes patients, enabling scientists to better search for the genes causing the disease. The company, working together with the Lund University and The Broad Institute scientific centers, said on Monday it has mapped all genes of a group of patients and compared them with those of healthy individuals.
"Canvassing the entire genome ... will allow scientists to gain novel insights into the disease's genetic underpinnings -- information that could potentially lead to the development of new, more effective therapies," Novartis said. The news comes as researchers over the weekend said they had homed in on five areas of DNA that could account for 70 percent of the genetic risk for type-2 diabetes, identifying four different areas of genetic variation conferring risk. Continue reading
Women who switch from the breast cancer pill tamoxifen to a newer class of drugs called aromatase inhibitors live longer, Italian researchers reported on Monday. Their study, published in the journal Cancer, adds to a growing body of evidence that the new drugs are far safer, preventing cancer with fewer side effects than tamoxifen.
Dr. Lauren Cassell of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York said the research is changing how doctors treat breast cancer patients after their tumors are surgically removed. "If they have been on tamoxifen we are switching them to an aromatase inhibitor. If they are newly diagnosed we are using an aromatase inhibitor instead of tamoxifen," she said in a statement. Continue reading
In the largest study to date on the health effects of napping, researchers tracked 23,681 healthy Greek adults for an average of about six years. Those who napped at least three times weekly for about half an hour had a 37 percent lower risk of dying from heart attacks or other heart problems than those who did not nap.
Most participants were in their 50s, and the strongest evidence was in working men, according to the study, which appears in Monday's issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. The researchers said naps might benefit the heart by reducing stress, and jobs are a common source of stress. It's likely that women reap similar benefits from napping, but not enough of them died during the study to be sure, said Dr. Dimitrios Trichopoulos, the study's senior author and a researcher at Harvard University and the University of Athens Medical School. Continue reading