Gender: Female
Men leave: Separation and divorce far more common when the wife is the patient
|
|
A woman is six times more likely to be separated or divorced soon after a diagnosis of cancer or multiple sclerosis than if a man in the relationship is the patient, according to a study that examined the role gender played in so-called “partner abandonment.” The study also found that the longer the marriage the more likely it would remain intact.
The study confirmed earlier research that put the overall divorce or separation rate among cancer patients at 11.6 percent, similar to the population as a whole. However, researchers were surprised by the difference in separation and divorce rates by gender. The rate when the woman was the patient was 20.8 percent compared to 2.9 percent when the man was the patient.
“Female gender was the strongest predictor of separation or divorce in each of the patient groups we studied,” said Marc Chamberlain, M.D., a co-corresponding author and director of the neuro-oncology program at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA). Chamberlain is also a professor of neurology and neurosurgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
Heart attacks up for women, but survival is too
|
|
The good news: Younger women’s survival after heart attack has improved substantially over the past decade, according to a new report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
The not-so-good news: Women younger than 55 are still less likely to survive a heart attack than their male counterparts, Dr. Viola Vaccarino of Emory University in Atlanta and her colleagues found. And another study in the same journal found heart attacks are becoming more common among women 35 to 54 years old.
Vaccarino and her team first reported a major gender difference in heart attack survival in people under 60 in 1999, a finding other investigators have since confirmed. To investigate whether things might have gotten better, they looked at a registry of more than 900,000 people hospitalized for a heart attack from 1994 to 2006.
New IOF report explains importance of FRAX® in osteoporosis management
|
|
The International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) will issue a new 16-page report on FRAX® to mark World Osteoporosis Day on October 20, 2009. The report is available at http://www.iofbonehealth.org/publications/frax.html
The International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) will issue a new 16-page report on FRAX® to mark World Osteoporosis Day on October 20, 2009. The report is available at http://www.iofbonehealth.org/publications/frax.html
FRAX®, or ‘WHO Fracture Risk Assessment Tool’, is a free online tool developed by the World Health Organization at http://www.shef.ac.uk/FRAX/. The tool helps clinicians to better identify women and men in need of intervention (at highest risk of fragility fractures) and thereby to improve the allocation of limited healthcare resources. FRAX® utilizes several known clinical risk factors rather than BMD alone to calculate a patient’s 10-year fracture probability, thus making it particularly useful in regions where DXA technology is scarce or not available.
Obesity in middle age bodes ill for old age
|
|
Women who are obese in middle age may live to be at least 70 but they are nowhere near as healthy as women who kept in good shape, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
An ongoing giant study of American nurses showed that only about 10 percent who made it to age 70 could be considered in top shape. Women who steadily gained weight from age 18 on ended up in the worst shape, the researchers said.
Most had some kind of physical or mental limitation, and more than a third had both chronic diseases and also mental or physical limitations.
The Pill may be less effective in obese women
|
|
Oral contraceptives behave differently in the bodies of obese women than in normal-weight women, new research shows, suggesting that they may not work as well in preventing pregnancy.
But more research is needed before any recommendations can be made on contraceptive use based on a woman’s body mass index (BMI), a standard measure of the ratio between height and weight, Dr. Alison B. Edelman of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland and her colleagues say.
There’s been some evidence to suggest that the birth control pill may be less effective in obese women, but findings have not been consistent, Edelman and her team note in the journal Contraception. Very little is known about how drug metabolism in the body is affected by obesity, they add, while obese women have been excluded from most studies of oral contraceptives.
Genes that influence start of menstruation identified for first time
|
|
Researchers from the Peninsula Medical School, along with collaborators from research institutions across Europe and the United States, have for the first time identified two genes that are involved in determining when girls begin menstruation. The work will be published in Nature Genetics this weekend.
The findings of the study could have ramifications for normal human growth and weight too, because early-age menstruation is also associated with shorter stature and increased body weight. In general, girls who achieve menstruation earlier in life tend to have greater body mass index (BMI) and a higher ratio of fat compared to those who begin menstruation later.
The study carried out an analysis of 17,510 women across eight different international population-based sources. This number included women of European descent who reported the age at which they reached menstruation of between nine and 17 years.
Hormone therapy lowers colon cancer risk
|
|
Hormone replacement therapy may raise a woman’s risk of breast cancer and heart disease but it lowers her risk of colon cancer, according to two studies released on Wednesday.
The studies presented at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research further complicate the debate about HRT, used to relieve the effects of menopause including hot flashes and insomnia.
Millions of women stopped taking HRT when a Women’s Health Initiative study showed in 2002 that the hormones raised the risk of stroke, heart disease and breast cancer. Hardest hit was Wyeth’s Premarin, which is soon to be acquired by Pfizer Inc.
Oral contraceptives linked to asthma risk
|
|
Some women who use oral contraceptives may have an increased risk for asthma, according to results of a Scandinavian study.
The effect depends on body mass index (BMI), with the rate of asthma increasing as BMI goes up, Dr. Ferenc Macsali of Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen, Norway, and colleagues report in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
From 1999 to 2001, the researchers mailed questionnaires to women ranging in age from 25-44 years in Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Respondents included 4,728 women who did not use oral contraceptives and 961 who did.
First sister study results reinforce the importance of healthy living
|
|
Women who maintain a healthy weight and who have lower perceived stress may be less likely to have chromosome changes associated with aging than obese and stressed women, according to a pilot study that was part of the Sister Study. The long-term Sister Study is looking at the environmental and genetic characteristics of women whose sister had breast cancer to identify factors associated with developing breast cancer. This early pilot used baseline questionnaires and samples provided by participants when they joined the Sister Study.
Two recent papers published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention looked at the length of telomeres, or the repeating DNA sequences that cap the ends of a person’s chromosomes. Telomere length is one of the many measures being looked at in the Sister Study. Telomeres protect the ends of chromosomes and buffer them against the loss of important genes during cell replication. Over the course of an individual’s lifetime, telomeres shorten, gradually becoming so short that they can trigger cell death. The papers show that factors such as obesity and perceived stress may shorten telomeres and accelerate the aging process.
“Together these two studies reinforce the need to start a healthy lifestyle early and maintain it,” said Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., the director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health. The researchers who published these papers are from the NIEHS which sponsors the Sister Study.
Studying the female form
|
|
Researchers in Japan have turned to mathematics to build a computerized 3D model of the female trunk that could help lingerie and other clothes designers make more sensuous, comfortable, and better fitting product ranges.
According to Kensuke Nakamura of Kyoto Institute of Technology and Takao Kurokawa of Osaka University, identifying body shape components is critical for designing close-fitting products, whether underwear, everyday clothes, or safety garments.
However, conventional body measurements, photographic images, and silhouette do not provide complete three-dimensional data with which modern designers could work to improve their products and tailor specific ranges to particular body shapes. The study might also have implications for research into body image disorders and ergonomics.
Parents of test tube babies seeking out siblings
|
|
Parents who conceived with donated sperm or eggs are increasingly seeking other families who used the same genetic material, sometimes locating as many as 55 “siblings” for their offspring, a study found on Tuesday.
The findings published in the journal Human Reproduction raise the issue of reusing a single donor’s sample numerous times - something policy makers may soon need to address, the researchers said.
In some cases, parents found more than 10 donor siblings, and one parent found 55 brothers and sisters for their child, Tabitha Freeman of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge in Britain, who led the study, said.
Women’s Cancer Outcome Improved by Surgical Evaluation
|
|
Many women scheduled to undergo hysterectomy for pre-cancerous cell changes actually need a more comprehensive surgery, something they should discuss with a gynecologic oncologist, say researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).
If seen by a specialist, it should be recommended they undergo a procedure that focuses on lymph nodes and other organs not involved in a traditional hysterectomy, said Warner Huh, M.D., a researcher at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The finding was presented at the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists’ 2009 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer in San Antonio.
“Given the high rate of endometrial cancer, these data strongly suggest all women who have abnormal bleeding and a diagnosis of pre-cancerous lesions of the uterus should be evaluated by a gynecologic oncologist,” Huh said.
Exercise boosts older women’s quality of life
|
|
Even modest amounts of exercise can improve older women’s quality of life, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that among more than 400 overweight postmenopausal women, those who took up an exercise program for six months showed gains in their physical and mental well-being—measured by factors such as daily energy levels, social life, emotional well-being and physical pain.
The more the women exercised, the greater the improvements in quality of life, the researchers report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
It is often said that exercise can improve a person’s energy, stress levels and overall sense of well-being, but now there is proof of that from a clinical trial, according to the researchers.
Protein That Regulates Hormones Critical to Women’s Health Found in Pituitary
|
|
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have solved the mystery surrounding a “rogue protein” that plays a role in the release of neurotransmitters and hormones in the brain.
The scientists found abundant amounts of the puzzling protein — whose main location and function were unknown until now — in a specific area of the pituitary gland. Like someone at a control knob, the protein may adjust the release of the two hormones that come almost exclusively from the posterior pituitary: oxytocin, which controls many reproductive functions, and vasopressin, which controls fluid balance.
“The findings raise very interesting possibilities for women’s health, in which rising and falling hormone levels play a key role in many biological processes,” says senior author Meyer Jackson, a professor of physiology at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH). More studies will be needed to better understand the protein, he adds.
The study appears in the Jan. 11 Nature Neuroscience.
Pollution at home often lurks unrecognized
|
|
Many people may be surprised by the number of chemicals they are exposed to through everyday household products, a small study finds, suggesting, researchers say, that consumers need to learn more about sources of indoor pollution.
In interviews with 25 women who’d had their homes and bodies tested for various environmental pollutants, researchers found that most were surprised and perplexed by the number of chemicals to which they’d been exposed.
The women had been part of a larger study conducted by the Silent Spring Institute in which their homes and urine samples were tested for 89 environmental contaminants—including pesticides and chemicals found in plastics, cleaning products and cosmetics.
