Health News - Wednesday, March 28, 2007
People who tend to be sedentary -- as indicated by the amount of time they spend watching television -- are likely to have high levels of glucose in their blood, even though they may not be diabetic. Dr. David W. Dunstan, of the International Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues examined the association between television viewing and blood glucose levels, measured after fasting and after a glucose test-drink, in 3781 men and 4576 women in Australia. All of the subjects were free of diabetes at the time.
An interviewer assessed the participants' self-reported television viewing time in the previous week. After accounting for physical activity time and for factors that can affect blood glucose, the investigators found that the more time women spent television viewing, the higher were their blood glucose levels two hours after they took the glucose test-drink. This was not seen in men, according to the team's report in the medical journal Diabetes Care. Continue reading
A small subgroup of Chinese men with suspected or diagnosed glaucoma may not need aggressive treatment, because the condition does not appear to progress, a new study suggests. In the medical journal Ophthalmology, Dr. Amish Doshi of California's Stanford University and colleagues report on a series of 16 patients originally diagnosed with glaucoma whose condition did not progress over a 7-year period.
More research is needed to better understand how common this type of slowing or non-progressing glaucoma is among males of Chinese origin, the researchers say. In the most common type of glaucoma, open-angle glaucoma, fluid cannot drain properly from the eyeball, leading to increased pressure within the eye and resulting in damage to the optic nerve. It may be treated with medication to lower pressure in the eye, and surgery may be performed to restore normal drainage. Continue reading
Employers who hire smokers should be ready for poorer-than-average performance and above-average sick leave time, two studies indicate. Overall, the study of more than 14,000 Swedish workers found they took an average of 25 sick leave days a year. But smokers averaged about 11 more sick leave days than nonsmokers, notes a report in the April issue of Tobacco Control.
The real surprise may be that sickness is only one of the reasons smokers ask for more time off, its author said. "I found that health problems accounted for about two days and something," said researcher Dr. Petter Lundborg, assistant professor of economics at the Free University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. "The remaining eight days are probably explained by something other than health." There are a number of possible explanations for the difference, he said. "Smokers tend to have lower income and be less educated," Lundborg said. "Then, there might be personal characteristics that we can't observe." Continue reading
Patients with bipolar disorder will gain no treatment benefit by adding an antidepressant to a standard mood stabilizer such as lithium, a new study finds. The results suggest that treating with a mood stabilizer alone is preferable, a recommendation that goes against common practice.
"We really think that at the beginning of your treatment, it is very reasonable to have this 'mood-stabilizer-optimized' kind of approach, and what we've learned from this study is it makes sense to give that some time to work," said Dr. Gary Sachs, lead author of the study, director of the bipolar clinic and research program at Massachusetts General Hospital and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "The patient loses nothing from that," Sachs added. "We did not show that any group benefited from having antidepressants added." On the other hand, doubling up the medications did not confer any risk, Sachs's team reported in the March 29 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Continue reading
Multiple regions of the brain are involved in determining the location of pain, a new study finds. The finding, published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience by researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, may help lead to improved methods of treating pain.
In many cases, it can be difficult for patients to pinpoint the actual location of pain, the researchers noted. For example, pain from a nerve injury is often felt in areas of the body other than the actual injury site. Or an injury on one side of the body may cause pain on both sides of the body. "The scientific understanding of spatial aspects of pain is so limited that patients with widespread pain may get sent to a psychiatrist rather than a pain clinic," neuroscientist Robert Coghill, senior researcher on the study, said in a prepared statement. Continue reading
Relatively healthy individuals with sleep disruptions at night may have an increased risk associated with development of a blood clot, also referred to as a thrombus, according news reports quoting medical journal Chest Wednesday. "There is an extensive literature demonstrating that sleep disruption is associated with increased coronary artery disease risk, but the possible mechanism for that association has been unclear," said lead author Dr. Joel E. Dimsdale, of the University of California San Diego.
"In previous work, we have found that sleep disruption was associated with pro-coagulant activity in patients with obstructive sleep apnea and in patients facing major life stress," he continued. "The current study reports similar findings even in a relatively healthy population." Dimsdale and colleagues examined whether sleep disruptions were associated with increased levels of prothrombotic factors previously shown to predict the risk of coronary artery disease. A polysomnograph, conducted in a sleep laboratory, involved the measurement of brain waves to record sleep cycles and stages, plus monitoring muscle activity, eye movement, breathing rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen levels and heart rate. The patient was also directly observed during sleep. Continue reading
A recent study in the United States reveals women with the highest levels of trans fat in their blood triple their risk of heart disease compared to those with the lowest levels. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Circulation, supports recent efforts to rid the American diet of trans fats.
"Humans cannot synthesize, or create, trans fatty acid. The only source is through diet," study chief Dr. Frank B. Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, said in a written statement. The main source of trans fat in the diet is partially hydrogenated oils that are plentiful in cookies, crackers, pastries and fried foods. "Eliminating the use of partially hydrogenated oils and other sources of trans fat in the U.S. diet -- as long as saturated fat intake doesn't increase -- will likely help reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease," Hu said. Continue reading