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NEWS NUGGET: Weekends and Weight Loss
Saturday can be the worst enemy for our waistlines, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who found that study subjects on strict diet and exercise programs tend to lose weight more slowly than expected because they eat more on weekends than during the week. The findings were published online in the journal Obesity.
Monitoring Hypertension at Home
Patients with hypertension who monitored their blood pressure from home and received Web-based pharmacist care showed greater improvement in blood pressure control than patients who received usual care, according to a study in the June 25 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers tested whether hypertension care could be successfully provided remotely over the Web without in-person clinic visits. The trial included 778 participants ages 25 to 75 who had uncontrolled
NEWS NUGGET: Cost of Surgical Errors
Potentially preventable medical errors that occur during or after surgery may cost employers nearly $1.5 billion a year, according to new estimates by the Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Nutrition and Intelligence
Adults who had improved nutrition in early childhood may score better on intellectual tests, regardless of the number of years they attended school, according to a report in the July issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. “Schooling is a key component of the development of literacy, reading comprehension and cognitive functioning, and thus of human capital,” the authors write. But research also suggests that poor nutrition in early life is associated with poor performance
Diet and Male Fertility
Men who eat an average of half a serving of soy food a day have lower concentrations of sperm than men who don't eat soy foods, according to research published online July 24 in the journal Human Reproduction. The association between soy and lower sperm counts was particularly marked in men who were overweight or obese. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that men who ate the most soy food had 41 million sperm per milliliter less than men who did not consume soy products
Cardiovascular Risks in Younger Adults
Prehypertension during young adulthood is common and is associated with subsequent coronary atherosclerosis, according to a study published in the July 15 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. Researchers from the University of California at San Francisco analyzed blood pressure measurements of 3,560 adults ages 18 to 30 from seven examinations over the course of 20 years. Nearly 20 percent (635) of the study participants developed prehypertension (systolic blood pressure 120 to 139 mm Hg or
TREND WATCH: Obesity
Most U.S. adults (more than 86 percent) will be overweight or obese by 2030, with related health care spending projected to be as much as $956.9 billion, according to projections by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Their results are published in the July 2008 online issue of Obesity.
Relieving Mammography Discomfort
The simple application of lidocaine gel may reduce the breast discomfort some women experience during mammography exams, according to a study published online in Radiology. “With a more positive experience, we hope women will undergo more regular mammography screening,” said Colleen Lambertz, FNP, a nurse practitioner at St. Luke's Mountain States Tumor Institute in Boise, Idaho. Researchers recruited 418 women, ages 32 to 89, who expected significant discomfort with screening mammography; 54
Sleep and Menopause
Difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep increase as women go through menopause, according to research published in the July 1 issue of the journal SLEEP. Waking up earlier than planned also increases through late perimenopause but decreases when women become postmenopausal. This study also compared sleep habits of menopausal women from different ethnic groups. Compared with other ethnic groups, Caucasian women were more likely to report difficulty staying asleep, while Hispanic women were
Exercise Keeps the Heart Young
Older people who did endurance exercise training for about a year ended up with metabolically much younger hearts, according to a study conducted at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers measured heart metabolism in sedentary older people both at rest and during administration of dobutamine, a drug that makes the heart race as if a person were exercising vigorously. At the start of the study, they found that in response to the increased energy demands produced
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and Daughters
Elevated levels of insulin could be an early sign that girls whose mothers have polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) may also be susceptible to the disease, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. Researchers were interested in finding out whether metabolic and reproductive abnormalities associated with the inheritable disease are more likely to show up in children whose mothers have PCOS, and how parents could find out whether their child was at
Breast Cancer Genetic Test
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a genetic test for determining whether patients with breast cancer are good candidates for treatment with the medication trastuzumab (Herceptin). The SPOT-Light HER2 CISH kit measures the number of copies of the HER2 gene in tumor tissue. This gene regulates the growth of cancer cells. A healthy breast cell has two copies of the HER2 gene, which sends a signal to cells, telling them when to grow, divide and make repairs. Patients with
Insurance Coverage Across the Nation
New England had the lowest percentage of uninsured individuals under age 65 during the 2004 to 2006 period, while the Southwest had the highest percentage, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. Overall, 91.1 percent of New Englanders had some kind of health insurance during this time period, while in the Southwest 18.2 percent of children and nearly 30 percent of adults were uninsured. In addition, 67.8 percent of the
Jennifer Hellwig, MS, RD, ELS, is a managing editor of Nursing for Women’s Health.
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Jennifer Hellwig, MS, RD, ELS, is a managing editor of Nursing for Women’s Health.