Tag Archives: disease researchers

Only 10 percent of U.S. adults have low heart risk

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Only 10 percent of U.S. adults have low heart risk

Ninety percent of American adults have at least one risk factor for heart disease, researchers reported on Monday.

Virtually all Americans either have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, are overweight, smoke or exercise too little, the team led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

“Unfortunately, the limited strides that were made toward this goal during the 1970s and 1980s were eroded by the increases in excess weight, diabetes and hypertension during more recent decades,” the CDC’s Dr. Earl Ford, who led the study, said in a statement.

Ford’s team looked at four national studies covering tens of thousands of Americans aged 25 to 74.

Only 10 percent had low risk scores in all five categories, they reported in the journal Circulation.

“Until the early 90s, we were moving in a positive direction, but then it took a turn and we’re headed in a negative direction,” said Ford.

“When you look at the individual factors, tobacco use is still headed in the right direction and so are cholesterol levels, although that has leveled off. The problem is that blood pressure, BMI (body mass index, a measure of obesity) and diabetes are all headed in the wrong direction.”

Heart disease is the No. 1 killer in the United States and many other countries.

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Infections may speed Alzheimer’s memory loss

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Infections may speed Alzheimer’s memory loss

Catching a cold or the flu could speed memory loss in people with Alzheimer’s disease, researchers reported Tuesday.

In a study of patients with mild to severe Alzheimer’s disease, they found that people who suffered acute or chronic infections, or even bumps and bruises from a fall, were much more likely to have high blood levels of a protein involved in inflammation and also experienced faster memory loss than people who did not have infections and who had low levels of this protein.

It’s possible that finding a way to reduce inflammation in the body “could be beneficial for people with Alzheimer’s disease,” study chief Dr. Clive Holmes, from the University of Southampton, UK, said in a prepared statement.

Over about 6 months, Holmes and colleagues measured the cognitive abilities and blood levels the inflammatory protein TNF-alpha of 222 people with Alzheimer’s disease. They also interviewed each subject’s main caregiver several times during the study.

During follow up, roughly half of the study subjects experienced a sudden infection or injury that led to inflammation, and a spike in TNF-alpha levels. These people, the researchers found, experienced memory loss that was at twice the rate of those who did not have infections or injuries.

People who had high levels of TNF-alpha in their blood at the beginning of the study, a sign of chronic, ongoing inflammation, had memory loss at four times the rate of those with low levels of the protein at the start of the study.

By contrast, subjects with low levels of TNF-alpha throughout the study showed no decline in brain function, the report indicates.

“One might guess that people with a more rapid rate of cognitive decline are more susceptible to infections or injury, but we found no evidence to suggest that people with more severe dementia were more likely to have infections or injuries at the beginning of the study,” Holmes noted in a prepared statement.

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