Gender: Male
Long-term unemployment may accelerate aging in men
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Men who are unemployed for more than two years show signs of faster ageing in their DNA, a new study has found.
Researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Oulu, Finland studied DNA samples from 5,620 men and women born in Finland in 1966.
They measured structures called telomeres, which lie at the ends of chromosomes and protect the genetic code from being degraded. Telomeres become shorter over a person’s lifetime, and their length is considered a marker for biological ageing. Short telomeres are linked to higher risk of age-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The researchers looked at telomere length in blood cells from samples collected in 1997, when the participants were all 31 years old. The study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, found that men who had been unemployed for more than two of the preceding three years were more than twice as likely to have short telomeres compared to men who were continuously employed.
Older Adults May Need More Vitamin D to Prevent Mobility Difficulties
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Older adults who don’t get enough vitamin D - either from diet, supplements or sun exposure - may be at increased risk of developing mobility limitations and disability, according to new research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
“This is one of the first studies to look at the association of vitamin D and the onset of new mobility limitations or disability in older adults,” said lead author Denise Houston, Ph.D., R.D., a nutrition epidemiologist in the Wake Forest Baptist Department of Geriatrics and Gerontology. Houston researches vitamin D and its effects on physical function.
The study, published online this month in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, analyzed the association between vitamin D and onset of mobility limitation and disability over six years of follow-up using data from the National Institute on Aging’s Health, Aging, and Body Composition (Health ABC) study. Mobility limitation and disability are defined as any difficulty or inability to walk several blocks or climb a flight of stairs, respectively.
Infertility gene may lead to pill for men
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Scottish scientists have discovered a gene that plays a key role in production of healthy sperm, a breakthrough that could soon pave the way for developing a new contraceptive pill for men.
In experiments on mice, researchers at the Centre for Reproductive Health at the University of Edinburgh found a gene, called Katnal1, which was vital for the final stages of sperm production.
Detailing their findings in the journal PLos Genetics, the team said a drug which interrupts Katnal1 could be a reversible contraceptive.
Online dating research shows cupid’s arrow is turning digital
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Online dating has not only shed its stigma, it has surpassed all forms of matchmaking in the United States other than meeting through friends, according to a new analysis of research on the burgeoning relationship industry.
The digital revolution in romance is a boon to lonely-hearters, providing greater and more convenient access to potential partners, reports the team of psychological scientists who prepared the review. But the industry’s claims to offering a “science-based” approach with sophisticated algorithm-based matching have not been substantiated by independent researchers and, therefore, “should be given little credence,” they conclude.
“Online dating is definitely a new and much needed twist on relationships,” says Harry Reis, one of the five co-authors of the study and professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. Behavioral economics has shown that the dating market for singles in Western society is grossly inefficient, especially once individuals exit high school or college, he explains. “The Internet holds great promise for helping adults form healthy and supportive romantic partnerships, and those relationships are one of the best predictors of emotional and physical health,” says Reis.
Does driving a Porsche make a man more desirable to women?
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New research by faculty at Rice University, the University of Texas-San Antonio (UTSA) and the University of Minnesota finds that men’s conspicuous spending is driven by the desire to have uncommitted romantic flings. And, gentlemen, women can see right through it.
The series of studies, “Peacocks, Porsches and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous Consumption as a Sexual Signaling System,” was conducted with nearly 1,000 test subjects and published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
“This research suggests that conspicuous products, such as Porsches, can serve the same function for some men that large and brilliant feathers serve for peacocks,” said Jill Sundie, assistant professor of marketing at UTSA and lead author of the paper.
Cell phone use may reduce male fertility
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Men who have been diagnosed with poor sperm quality and who are trying to have children should limit their cell phone use. Researchers have found that while cell phone use appears to increase the level of testosterone circulating in the body, it may also lead to low sperm quality and a decrease in fertility.
“Our findings were a little bit puzzling,” says Rany Shamloul, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and lead researcher on the project. “We were expecting to find different results, but the results we did find suggest that there could be some intriguing mechanisms at work.”
The research team discovered that men who reported cell phone use had higher levels of circulating testosterone but they also had lower levels of luteinizing hormone (LH), an important reproductive hormone that is secreted by the pituitary gland in the brain.
Memory problems more common in men?
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A new study shows that mild cognitive impairment (MCI) may affect more men than women. The research is published in the September 7, 2010, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Mild cognitive impairment is a condition in which people have problems with memory or thinking beyond that explained by the normal rate of aging. The study found that MCI was 1.5 times higher in men compared to women. MCI often leads to Alzheimer’s disease.
“This is the first study conducted among community-dwelling persons to find a higher prevalence of MCI in men,” said study author Ronald Petersen, MD, PhD, with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “If these results are confirmed in other studies, it may suggest that factors related to gender play a role in the disease. For example, men may experience cognitive decline earlier in life but more gradually, whereas women may transition from normal memory directly to dementia at a later age but more quickly.”
Women and men travelers get different illnesses
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World travel can make anyone sick but men and women tend to suffer different illnesses with women more prone to stomach problems and men at higher risk of fevers and sexually transmitted diseases, Swiss researchers found.
A study of almost 59,000 international travelers by the University of Zurich found women were more likely than men to come down with bouts of diarrhea or other gastrointestinal problems, colds, urinary tract infections and adverse reactions to medications, such as those taken to prevent malaria.
Men had higher risks of fever, including from infections transmitted by mosquitoes, ticks or other such “vectors,” such as malaria, dengue and rickettsia.
Men leave: Separation and divorce far more common when the wife is the patient
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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.
Men Are Red, Women Are Green, Brown Researcher Finds
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Men are red. Women are green.
Michael J. Tarr, a Brown University scientist, and graduate student Adrian Nestor have discovered this color difference in an analysis of dozens of faces. They determined that men tend to have more reddish skin and greenish skin is more common for women.
The finding has important implications in cognitive science research, such as the study of face perception. But the information also has a number of potential industry or consumer applications in areas such as facial recognition technology, advertising, and studies of how and why women apply makeup.
“Color information is very robust and useful for telling a man from a woman,” said Tarr, the Sidney A. and Dorothea Doctors Fox Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences at Brown. “It’s a demonstration that color can be useful in visual object recognition.”
The woman in red drives the men crazy, study finds
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If a woman wants to drive the men wild, she might want to dress in red.
Men rated a woman shown in photographs as more sexually attractive if she was wearing red clothing or if she was shown in an image framed by a red border rather than some other color, U.S. researchers said Tuesday.
The study led by psychology professor Andrew Elliot of the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, seemed to confirm red as the color of romance—as so many Valentine’s Day card makers and lipstick sellers have believed for years.
Although this “red alert” may be a product of human society associating red with love for eons, it also may arise from more primitive biological roots, Elliot said.
Soy-based foods may lower sperm count: study
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Eating a half serving a day of soy-based foods could be enough to significantly lower a man’s sperm count, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
The study is the largest in humans to look at the relationship between semen quality and a plant form of the female sex hormone estrogen known as phytoestrogen, which is plentiful in soy-rich foods.
“What we found was men that consume the highest amounts of soy foods in this study had a lower sperm concentration compared to those who did not consume soy foods,” said Dr. Jorge Chavarro of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, whose study appears in the journal Human Reproduction.
Exercise cuts cancer death in men
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Men who exercise often are less likely to die from cancer than those who don’t exercise, according to a new study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet. In the study, the researchers looked at the effect of physical activity and cancer risk in 40,708 men aged between 45 and 79.
Over the seven year period of the study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, 3,714 men developed cancer and 1,153 died from the disease. Men who walked or cycled for at least 30 minutes a day had an increased survival from cancer with 33 per cent, than the men who exercised less or did nothing at all. The researchers also found that a more extensive programme of walking and cycling for between 60 and 90 minutes and a day, led to a l6 per cent lower incidence of cancer. But these activities only led to a five per cent reduction in cancer rates among the men who walked or cycled for 30 minutes day, a finding which could be due to chance.
The researchers surveyed men from two counties in central Sweden about their lifestyle and the amount of physical activity they did. They then scored these responses and compared the results with data officially recorded in a central cancer registry over a seven year period.
Many Men With Low Testosterone Levels Do Not Receive Treatment
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The majority of men with androgen deficiency may not be receiving treatment despite having sufficient access to care, according to a report in the May 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Androgen deficiency in men means the body has lower than normal amounts of male hormones, including testosterone, according to background information in the article. Although prescriptions for testosterone therapy for aging men have increased in recent years, treatment patterns for androgen deficiency are not clearly understood in community-dwelling U.S. males.
Susan A. Hall, Ph.D., of New England Research Institutes, Watertown, Mass., and colleagues examined data collected from 1,486 Boston-area men (average age 46.4) from April 2002 to June 2005 to estimate the number of men receiving treatment for androgen deficiency, to explain how treated and untreated men varied in seeking care and to understand potential barriers to health care. Specific symptoms of androgen deficiency include low libido, erectile dysfunction and osteoporosis and less-specific symptoms include sleep disturbance, depressed mood and tiredness.
Overweight Men at Risk of Osteoarthritis of Both Hip and Knee
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Men who are overweight or obese are much more likely need a hip replacement for osteoarthritis than men who are of normal weight, finds research published online ahead of print in Annals of Rheumatic Diseases.
People who are overweight are known to be more likely to get osteoarthritis of the knee, but this is the first study to show that being overweight is a risk factor for hip osteoarthritis in men but not women.
Researchers compared the body mass indexes of 1,473 Icelandic people who had undergone hip or knee replacement with those of 1,103 people who had not had joint replacement surgery. All were born between 1910 and 1939.
