Women Now Live Longer than Men, Even in the Poorest Countries
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2006 is likely to be the first year in human history when - across almost all the world - women can expect to outlive men, say researchers in this week’s BMJ.
The trend towards this remarkable achievement will probably be confirmed this week in the 2006 world health report.
“We tend to forget that in many countries of the world women could expect, until recently, to live fewer years than men and that maternal death in particular remains a big killer,” write Danny Dorling and colleagues. In Europe, men last outlived women in the Netherlands in 1860 and in Italy in 1889. Elsewhere females’ life expectancy has long exceeded males’: in Sweden since 1751, Denmark since 1835, England and Wales since 1841.
Syria breaks taboo on violence against women
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Syria has broken a taboo by presenting a high profile study on violence against women, which found that one in four married women gets beaten—usually by her husband or father.
The study, released this week by the state-run General Union of Women and funded by United Nations Development Fund for Women, sheds light on the nature and extent of violence against women in Syria.
It also coincides with calls for a campaign to raise awareness of the problem.
Sleeping Pills May Not Be Best Way for Seniors to Get Good Night’s Sleep
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Have trouble falling asleep at night? Before you reach for a pill you should hear the results of a recent study that found sleep medications are twice as likely to cause harm to a senior patient than they are to help them sleep better.
“Probably about 50 percent of older adults complain of sleep related problems,” says Jill Studley, M.D., gerontologist on the medical staff at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas.
Millions of seniors ask their physicians for sedatives or sleeping pills or even get them over-the-counter, but new studies demonstrate how dangerous taking these medications can be for older adults. According to recent research, these drugs are twice as likely to cause an accident than they are to help you sleep.
Better Stroke Outcome with High Blood Calcium
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Higher levels of calcium in the blood are associated with less severe stroke and better outcome, according to research that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology 58th Annual Meeting in San Diego, Calif., April 1 - 8, 2006.
Calcium and magnesium are intricately involved in the pathways of cell death in models of stroke, and high dietary intake of these minerals has been associated with a reduced risk of experiencing a stroke according to lead scientist Bruce Ovbiagele, MD, of the Stroke Center and Department of Neurology at the University of California, Los Angeles. This association led Ovbiagele to ask whether levels of serum calcium and magnesium might predict the severity and outcome in patients presenting with a stroke.
Ovbiagele’s group studied 240 consecutive patients who were seen at the UCLA Stroke Center within 24 hours of their stroke. Patients were classified into four groups, based on the level of calcium and magnesium in their blood. Researchers measured stroke severity at the time that patients were admitted into the hospital and how well they functioned upon being discharged.
Drinking more water does no harm in elderly men
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Increasing fluid intake by about a liter per day appears to have no negative effects in healthy older men, Dutch researchers report.
Dr. Mark G. Spigt of Maastricht University and colleagues note in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society that older people are often dehydrated, partly because their sensation of thirst may be blunted. On the other hand, the elderly can easily become overly hydrated, because their kidneys tend to work less efficiently. Retaining excess water can dilute the level of sodium in the body, which can have serious consequences.
“We did this analysis,” Spigt told Reuters Health, “because it was unknown whether it could do harm to hydrate elderly people. Despite the lack of evidence on this topic many people assume all kinds of effects; some claim positive effects, others warn against overhydration.”
Few get prompt care after mini-stroke
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Most people don’t seek medical attention immediately after suffering a “mini-stroke,” a new UK study shows.
Symptoms of a mini-stroke, known medically as a transient ischemic attack (TIA), are exactly the same as those of a full-fledged stroke, but resolve within 24 hours. While TIAs in themselves cause no long-term problems, they substantially increase the likelihood of having a full-fledged stroke soon afterwards.
“Because they don’t cause any long-term problems themselves, people are inclined often to ignore them or instead put them down to ‘one of those things,’” Dr. Matthew F. Giles of Oxford University’s Stroke Prevention Research Unit in London, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health. “That can be a dangerous action.”
Drug industry spends millions lobbying US states
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The pharmaceutical industry spent $44 million lobbying U.S. state officials during a two-year period with much of the money going to fight proposals that would have reduced prescription drug costs, according to report released on Thursday.
The Center for Public Integrity said industry representatives spent the money in 2003 and 2004, a time when more than half of all states were considering proposals to reduce the cost of medicines. Prescription medicines are one of the fastest-growing expenses for state governments, which are among the pharmaceutical industry’s biggest customers, the report said.
The investigative research center analyzed lobbyist disclosure documents and records from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) as well as conducted interviews with current and former state representatives.
Merck faces punitive phase of Vioxx trial
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The punitive phase of a trial involving Merck & Co.‘s drug Vioxx was set to start on Thursday after a jury found the drugmaker failed to warn Vioxx users of heart risks and ordered it to pay a 77-year-old plaintiff at least $4.5 million in damages.
Merck shares fell 4.2 percent to $34.48 in premarket trade Thursday after the jury in Atlantic City, New Jersey, found that Vioxx had been a substantial contributing cause of a heart attack suffered by John McDarby. The jury determined the drug was not a significant cause of a heart attack suffered by a second plaintiff, Thomas Cona.
Credit Suisse analyst Catherine Arnold said Wednesday’s split verdict should lead to weakness in Merck shares.
Antibiotic May Help Fight Dementia in HIV Patients
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An antibiotic may help prevent dementia in HIV patients, according to a study that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology 58th Annual Meeting in San Diego, Calif., April 1 - 8, 2006.
“People infected with HIV often develop dementia as part of their illness, but there is currently no specific treatment for this complication,” said the study’s lead author, Jeffrey Rumbaugh, MD, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University. According to the researchers, two HIV proteins, called Tat and gp120, have been implicated in the development of HIV dementia.
One effect of these proteins is to reduce expression of a neuronal membrane receptor, called EAAT-2 (excitatory amino acid transporter-2). EAAT-2 absorbs the neurotransmitter glutamate from the space between neurons (the synapse), thereby preventing excess neuronal excitation which can cause cell death. Researchers believe that by reducing EAAT-2, the HIV proteins increase brain damage, which leads to dementia in patients.
Compulsive Behaviors Are Common from Parkinson Treatment
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People treated for Parkinson disease are prone to pathologic gambling, hypersexuality, and compulsive shopping, according to research that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology 58th Annual Meeting in San Diego, Calif., April 1 - 8, 2006.
Reports have been growing in the past several years of compulsive behavior among patients with Parkinson disease who receive levodopa or dopamine agonists, the mainstays of Parkinson treatment. To examine the true extent of the problem, Valerie Voon, MD, of the National Institute for Neurologic Diseases and Stroke in Bethesda, MD, and her colleagues, conducted a prospective survey in almost 300 Parkinson patients, asking about pathologic gambling, hypersexuality, and compulsive shopping. They followed up with in-depth psychiatric interviews for those reporting any of the three compulsive behaviors.
Among their sample, pathologic gambling started in 10 patients (3.4 percent) after they began treatment, which is double the number expected based on population-wide surveys. These patients had lost an average of $150,000. Hypersexuality was seen in seven patients, and compulsive shopping in two.
Study questions health benefits of moderate drinking
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The majority of studies suggesting that “moderate” drinking helps prevent heart disease may be flawed, according to an international research group.
In a new report, researchers from the U.S., Canada, and Australia analyze 54 studies that linked how much people drink with risk of premature death from all causes, including heart disease. Researchers from the University of Victoria in British Columbia and the University of California, San Francisco led the team.
The researchers investigated a suggestion put forth in the scientific community that many of the studies conducted so far on drinking and premature death made a consistent and serious error by including as “abstainers” people who had cut down or quit drinking due to declining health, frailty, medication use or disability. When such studies show a higher death rate for abstainers than for moderate drinkers, this result may reflect the poor health of some abstainers who recently quit drinking rather than indicating a protective effect for alcohol.
A Body Temperature of 98.6° Is Anything but Normal
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The 98.6° F “normal” benchmark for body temperature comes to us from Dr. Carl Wunderlich, a 19th-century German physician who collected and analyzed over a million armpit temperatures for 25,000 patients. Some of Wunderlich’s observations have stood up over time, but his definition of normal has been debunked, says the April issue of the Harvard Health Letter. A study published years ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association found the average normal temperature for adults to be 98.2°, not 98.6°, and replaced the 100.4° fever mark with fever thresholds based on the time of day.
Now, researchers at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, N.Y., have found support for another temperature truism doctors have long recognized: Older people have lower temperatures. In a study of 150 older people with an average age of about 81, they found that the average temperature never reached 98.6°. These findings suggest that even when older people are ill, their body temperature may not reach levels that people recognize as fever. On the other hand, body temperatures that are too low (about 95°) can also be a sign of illness.
Sleep problems under-studied in US, report finds
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Although more than 50 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep disorders, too few scientists study the problem and too few health-care professionals are trained to diagnose and treat it, a panel of experts reported on Tuesday.
Sleep troubles not only make people miserable—they cost the nation hundreds of billions of dollars every year in medical expenses, lost productivity, accidents and other costs, the Institute of Medicine said in a report.
“Although sleep research and care for individuals with sleep disorders have expanded over the past several years, we currently don’t have the capacity to adequately diagnose and treat all who suffer from these problems,” said Harvey Colten, who chaired the committee that wrote the report.
Menopause linked to new onset of depression
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Women who haven’t previously suffered from depression are at increased risk of developing depressive symptoms around the time they enter menopause, according to two studies appearing in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
The transition to menopause is often considered a high-risk period for depressive symptoms, yet scientific evidence supporting this association is lacking, points out one of the research teams, led by Dr. Ellen W. Freeman from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
In an 8-year study, Freeman’s group tracked 231 women who were about to enter menopause, none of whom had any history of depression up to the time they enrolled. The Center for Epidemiological Studies of Depression (CED-D) scale was used to assess depressive symptoms during follow-up.
WHO advisers urge drugs firms cut prices for poor
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International drugs companies should seek to reduce prices for medicines sold to the poorest countries and avoid filing for patent protection there, a report prepared for the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.
The 228-page study, drawn up by an independent team led by former Swiss president Ruth Dreifuss, also urged rich states not to toughen intellectual property protection conditions in trade pacts to the point where they could limit access to medicines.
“All companies should adopt transparent and consistent pricing policies and should work toward reducing prices on a more consistent basis for low and middle income developing countries,” the report said.
