September 18th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Middle-aged women who drink alcohol moderately yet regularly throughout the week may age more healthfully, according to data from the Nurses’ Health Study.
After adjusting for variables such as smoking, women who drank light or moderate amounts of alcohol had a modestly increased chance of successful ageing compared to nondrinkers. For example, compared to nondrinkers, women who drank 5 to 15 g of alcohol per day (between one-third and one drink per day) at middle age had about a 20% higher chance of successful ageing, defined as being free of 11 major chronic diseases and having no major cognitive, physical or mental health limitations at age 70.
Independent of total alcohol intake, women who drank alcohol regularly had a better chance of successful ageing than occasional drinkers. Thus, compared to nondrinkers, women who drank five to seven days a week had nearly a 50% greater chance of successful ageing whereas women who drank only one or two days a week had a similar likelihood of successful ageing.
Researchers measured alcohol consumption at midlife using Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
September 14th, 2011 by Peggy Polaneczky, M.D. in Research
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The idea that heart disease mortality rises dramatically at menopause has been one of the truisms of medicine that spawned a generation of hormone use by women and led to the rise and subsequent fall of Prempro in the Women’s Health Initiative, the end-all-be-all study that failed to prove the truism. The truism is still so strongly believed that research to prove it right continues, using different hormone formulations and different cohorts of women, in the hopes that the hormonal fountain of youth was just misbranded and given to the wrong aged cohort.
Now comes a landmark study that suggests that what we’ve thought all along about heart disease and menopause may actually be wrong.
Dhananjay Vaidya and colleagues at Johns Hopkins and the University of Alabama have re-analyzed mortality data on men and women in the UK and US and concluded that, contrary to popular belief, heart disease rates and mortality do not increase dramatically with menopause, but rather rise more gradually as a function of age in both men and women.
“Our data show there is Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Blog That Ate Manhattan*
September 13th, 2011 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Research
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A new study of more than 52,000 pregnant women in Canada shows that miscarriage rates were more than twice as high for women who took a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) compared to women who did not. The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal reported that women who used prescription NSAIDS for just 4 days during early pregnancy had an increased risk for miscarriage.
These medications are commonly prescribed for pain, cramps, headaches and fever and can be bought over the counter as Advil, Aleeve or Ibuprofen. We have thought they were safe in early pregnancy but this study shows that may not be the case. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
August 26th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Women gain weight after marriage and men after divorce, especially among those over 30, likely the result of “weight shock” to people’s routines in physical activity and diet, sociologists reported.
The research, led by a sociology doctoral student at The Ohio State University, was presented at a roundtable on Marriage and Family at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. They used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth ’79, a nationally representative sample of men and women ages 14 to 22 in 1979. The same people were surveyed every year up to 1994 and every other year since then, reported a press release.
Data on more than 10,000 people surveyed from 1986 to 2008 was used to determine Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
August 16th, 2011 by MellanieTrueHills in Health Tips, Research
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As a patient, you probably see lots of hype-filled reports about various drugs. After a drug is approved, there’s an inevitable blitz of negative publicity which often scares people away from important new solutions that could help them.
There has been so much news lately about Multaq (dronedarone), the drug designed to provide the benefits of amiodarone but with fewer risks. This drug is important to people with afib, especially those with heart disease whose choices are limited, so it’s time to put into context for patients what has transpired in the two years since FDA approval.
These two companion articles provide an in-depth analysis into issues that have been reported about Multaq, including whether it can cause: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Atrial Fibrillation Blog*
After adjusting for variables such as smoking, women who drank light or moderate amounts of alcohol had a modestly increased chance of successful ageing compared to nondrinkers. For example, compared to nondrinkers, women who drank 5 to 15 g of alcohol per day (between one-third and one drink per day) at middle age had about a 20% higher chance of successful ageing, defined as being free of 11 major chronic diseases and having no major cognitive, physical or mental health limitations at age 70.
