|
|
Research News Watching hours of TV could Shorten Your Life Source: Reuters, 11th January 2010 Couch potatoes, beware. Sitting in front of the television for hours daily could shorten your life, according to an Australian study. Researchers from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in the state of Victoria tracked the lifestyle habits of 8,800 adults and found that each hour spent in front of the TV daily increased the risk of dying earlier from cardiovascular disease. The study, published in "Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association," found every hour in front of the TV was associated with an 11 percent increased risk of death from all causes, a 9 percent higher risk of cancer death, and an 18 percent increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) related death. "Compared with people who watched less than two hours of television daily, those who watched more than four hours a day had a 46 percent higher risk of death from all causes and an 80 percent increased risk for CVD-related death," the researchers said in a statement. The researchers said this association held regardless of other independent and common cardiovascular disease risk factors, including smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, unhealthy diet, excessive waist circumference, and leisure-time exercises. Researcher David Dunstan said the study focused specifically on television watching but the findings suggest that any prolonged sedentary behavior, such as sitting at a desk or in front of a computer, may pose a health risk. "The human body was designed to move, not sit for extended periods of time," said Dunstan, head of the institute's physical activity laboratory in the division of metabolism and obesity. "Technological, social, and economic changes mean that people don't move their muscles as much as they used to - consequently the levels of energy expenditure as people go about their lives continue to shrink. "For many people, on a daily basis they simply shift from one chair to another -- from the chair in the car to the chair in the office to the chair in front of the television." Dunstan said the findings applied not only to individuals who were overweight and obese, but also those of a healthy weight. "Even if someone has a healthy body weight, sitting for long periods of time still has an unhealthy influence on their blood sugar and blood fats," he said. "In addition to doing regular exercise, avoid sitting for prolonged periods and keep in mind to 'move more, more often'. Too much sitting is bad for health." The researchers interviewed 3,846 men and 4,954 women aged 25 and older who underwent oral glucose-tolerance tests and provided blood samples so researchers could measure biomarkers such as cholesterol and blood sugar levels. Participants were enrolled from 1999 and followed through 2006 and reported their television-viewing habits.
Breakthrough May Pave the Way for Therapeutic Vaccines Source: ScienceDaily, 18th December 2009 t should be possible to use therapeutic vaccines to create both cheap and effective drugs for diseases like cancer and allergies. One problem in developing such vaccines has previously been the lack of adjuvants, substances that make vaccines more effective. However, there has now been a major breakthrough in this area. The study, led by scientists at Uppsala University, is published in the December issue of the journal Vaccine. Many of the treatment methods that are developed today for allergies, cancer, and autoimmune diseases are based on the use of so-called monoclonal antibodies. The cost of these protein pharmaceuticals is high, between 15 000 and 150 000 dollars per patient and year, and long periods of treatment are often needed. Therapeutic vaccines contain no pre-produced antibodies but rather stimulate our immune system to produce its own therapeutic antibodies. They are considerably less expensive to manufacture than the drugs that are now being produced. "Therapeutic vaccines that target the same molecules in the body as the various monoclonal antibodies would enable us to reduce the cost of treatment significantly, and also decrease the number of visits patients need to make to the clinic," says Lars Hellman, professor of molecular and comparative immunology at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Uppsala University, who directed the study. One of the biggest problems when it comes to developing therapeutic vaccines has been the lack of so-called adjuvants, immune-stimulating substances that are added to boost the effect of the vaccine. Until now, there has been only one adjuvant that is approved for use in humans, and this substance has proven to have little or no effect when the target molecule is endogenous, that is, produced by the body itself. To develop new and more potent adjuvants, researchers from Uppsala University, in collaboration with colleagues from the Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute in Moscow, have performed comprehensive analyses of various potential combinations. "We have made a very important breakthrough by managing to identify a substance that is biologically degradable and that exhibits considerably higher activity than the adjuvants that have been used in the past," says Lars Hellman. "These new and highly promising findings are an important step toward developing more cost-effective drugs for some of our major public health diseases," he says.
Antidepressants Cut Risk of Hospital Readmission for Suicidal Youth, Study Suggests Source: ScienceDaily, 18th December 2009 Suicidal adolescents who were prescribed an antidepressant medication during inpatient psychiatric hospital treatment were 85 percent less likely than others to be readmitted within a month after discharge, a new study found. The results provide additional evidence that antidepressants may play a key role in helping improve the mental health of suicidal youth, said Cynthia Fontanella, co-author of the study and assistant professor of social work at Ohio State University. The findings are especially important now, because antidepressant use dropped in 2003 after the Food and Drug Administration issued a black box warning that some antidepressants may increase the risk of suicidal behavior for pediatric patients. A black-box warning is the most serious type of warning in prescription drug labeling. "We found that antidepressant treatment had a protective effect on readmission," Fontanella said. "Although the findings are preliminary, our results should be reassuring to child psychiatrists who may have been concerned about prescribing antidepressants since the FDA warning." But another key finding from the study showed that hospitalized youth who were prescribed three or more medications from different drug classes for mental health issues had a 3-fold increased risk of being readmitted within a month of discharge. Fontanella conducted the study with Ohio State researchers Jeffrey Bridge, assistant professor of pediatrics, and John Campo, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry. Both are also associated with the Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus. The study appears in the December issue of The Annals of Pharmacotherapy. The researchers did a retrospective study of 318 Medicaid-covered adolescents who were admitted to three major psychiatric hospitals in Maryland because of attempted suicide or suicidal behaviors. They examined hospital medical records for the adolescents and recorded all medication changes -- including additions, discontinuations and changed dosages that occurred during the hospital stay. The researchers then identified which patients were readmitted to any hospital in Maryland within 30 days of their discharge. Hospital readmissions within 30 days are considered an indicator of quality of care, Fontanella said. Most readmissions or post-hospitalization suicide attempts occur during that time period. Fontanella said that this is the first study to investigate the effects of hospital medication changes and use of multiple medications on readmission of suicidal youth. "We know little about how medication is being used to treat youth in inpatient care," she said. "This is a first step in figuring out what is effective and what is not." The study found that 78 percent of the inpatients had one or more changes in their medication, typically the addition of an antidepressant, mood stabilizer or antipsychotic. About a quarter of the adolescents were prescribed three or more medications from different drug classes. That's particularly concerning since those prescribed three or more drugs were 2.6 times more likely to be readmitted within 30 days, Fontanella said. Fontanella emphasized that the study does not address the appropriateness of the medication prescriptions given to any individual patient in the study. However, she added that psychiatrists need to be "very judicious" in prescribing multiple drugs to adolescents, given the risks. "What we're advocating is more quality monitoring and help for clinicians in hospitals to weigh the risks and benefits to putting adolescents on multiple medications," she said. She noted that the researchers took into account a variety of clinical factors that may be related to the severity of illness for the adolescents in this study. That means youth who received multiple drug prescriptions weren't necessarily more likely to be readmitted within 30 days simply because they had more severe illnesses than did other patients. While multiple medications presented clear dangers to adolescents in this study, the use of antidepressants was clearly helpful to most patients. The message for psychiatrists is that they shouldn't dismiss the use of antidepressants for troubled youth, despite the FDA warnings, Fontanella said. Beginning in 2003, several antidepressants have had to carry an FDA warning that states they may increase the risk of suicide for some users. Since that warning has appeared, the use of some antidepressants has fallen or leveled off, and the suicide rate among adolescents has risen. "Our study suggests that many adolescents can really benefit from antidepressants, particularly those who are severely depressed," she said. "We have to be very careful before deciding not to use these medications." One of the problems that hospital psychiatrists face is that they don't have time to adequately monitor how their medication changes are affecting their adolescent patients, according to Fontanella. The average stay for inpatients in this study was just 8 days. "Because the treatment stays are so short, the psychiatrists and their teams are at a disadvantage. They aren't given the time to monitor the medications to see if they are safe and effective for the individuals," she said. "We need better ways to monitor patients after they leave the hospital to look for possibly adverse effects and drug interactions, and to ensure the medications are effective." The study was supported in part by The Center for Health Care Strategies, Inc., under tha Annie E. Casey Foundation's Children in Managed Care Initiative. Additional support came from the National Institute of Mental Health. |
|
1st
Floor, T
08
8252 9444 |
F
08
8252 9433 | www.andgp.org.au
| ABN
12
061 979 048 Delivering local health solutions through general practice Unsubscribe from this mailing list. |