Health | 100 Tips

U.S. Task Force Backs Statins for Those 40 to 75 at Heightened Heart Risk

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Dec. 21, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs should be used to prevent a first heart attack or stroke in certain at-risk patients, according to a draft recommendation released Monday by the nation’s leading experts in preventive medicine.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said statins can provide maximum preventive benefits for adults 40 to 75 years old who have an existing risk factor for heart disease and at least a 10 percent or greater risk of a heart attack or stroke sometime within the next 10 years.

The independent panel added that people with a 10-year risk of heart attack and stroke between 7.5 percent and 10 percent might also benefit from statins, and should discuss the matter with their doctor.

“Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death, and people with no signs or symptoms or past history of cardiovascular disease can still be at risk,” said task force member Dr. Douglas Owens, a professor of medicine at Stanford University. “Our review indicates that some of these people can take a statin to prevent heart attacks and strokes.”

This is the first time that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has addressed statins as a means of heading off heart attacks or strokes, Owens said. Up to now, the task force has mainly focused on the best screening methods for detecting heart disease.

“Our sense was the really pressing question now is about who should be taking a statin to help control their cholesterol levels,” Owens said.

Cholesterol can contribute to a person’s risk of heart attack and stroke. The waxy substance can build up along the inner walls of the arteries that feed blood to the heart and the brain. This can force the heart to pump harder and increase the chances that a blood clot will seal off the vessel and cause a heart attack or stroke, according to the American Heart Association.

Statins interfere with the production of cholesterol by the liver, and thus help lower “bad” LDL cholesterol and raise “good” HDL cholesterol levels in the bloodstream, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Statin therapy can decrease a person’s overall risk of death, as well as their risk of dying from or suffering a heart attack or stroke, concluded an evidence review conducted by the USPSTF.

The benefit appeared greatest in people between 40 and 75 years old who already have a risk factor for heart disease like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes or smoking, Owens said.

The task force also found that statin therapy makes the most sense in people with at least a 10 percent risk of having a heart attack or stroke within the next decade, based on their age and current health.

“Statins are effective drugs,” Owens said. “Based on the evidence we reviewed, we feel the benefits of taking a statin outweigh the harms in these populations.”

Statins also are inexpensive, with generic versions available in many cases, he added.

Statins aren’t risk-free, however. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, some users have reported memory problems. There’s also an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and muscle damage, the agency said.

Owens could not say how many millions of Americans fall within the parameters of the new recommendations. People can assess their personal risk by visiting http://ift.tt/1f4OQAU, an online calculator sponsored by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology.

The task force also gave a limited recommendation for statin treatment of people with a 7.5 percent or higher risk who meet all the other criteria. “You could still benefit,” Owens said. “Our recommendation is to discuss it with your doctor. The greater your risk, the more likely you are to benefit from a statin.”

However, people at that lower level of risk are very likely to also benefit from lifestyle changes such as exercising more or eating a healthier diet, said Dr. Sidney Smith Jr., director of the Center for Cardiovascular Science and Medicine at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

“My concern is, given the choice between taking a pill or changing behavior, people will choose to take a pill and not deal with the lifestyle factors,” Smith said. “Taking the pill should not be a substitute for leading a healthy lifestyle, that’s for sure.”

Smith noted that the task force’s recommendations on statins closely resemble the guidelines already issued by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology.

“It’s always reassuring when we have two or three different groups looking at the same question and coming back with the same answer,” he said.

The public can submit comments on the USPSTF’s draft recommendation through Jan. 25, 2016.

More information

To learn more about statins, visit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/22lC6PG

U.S. Task Force Stays Neutral on Cholesterol Screening for Kids

MONDAY, Dec. 21, 2015 (HealthDay News) — There’s not enough evidence to recommend screening all children and teens for high cholesterol, experts say.

It’s not clear if such screening up to age 20 reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease in adulthood, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said in a draft recommendation released Monday. This is unchanged from a 2007 recommendation.

“There is currently not enough research to determine whether screening all average-risk children and adolescents without symptoms leads to better cardiovascular health in adulthood,” task force vice chair Dr. David Grossman said in a news release from the task force.

“In addition, the potential harms of long-term use of cholesterol-lowering medication by children and adolescents are not yet understood,” Grossman added.

The task force is an independent, volunteer panel of national experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine.

All children and teens should eat a healthy diet, exercise and maintain a normal weight, the task force advised.

“The task force recognizes the importance of cardiovascular health for young people and calls for more research on the benefits and harms of screening and treating young people for high cholesterol,” task force member Dr. Douglas Owens said in the news release.

More information

The American Heart Association has more about cholesterol.

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/22lC6Py

Florida ‘Pill Mill’ Crackdown May Have Curbed Painkiller ODs

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Dec. 21, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A crackdown on “pill mills” in Florida appears to have led to fewer overdose deaths from narcotic painkillers, and may have helped reduce heroin overdose deaths as well, researchers report.

Pill mills are clinics run by doctors who purportedly write large numbers of prescriptions for narcotic painkillers for cash, often without examining the patient, the researchers said. These painkillers include Oxycontin, Percocet and Vicodin.

After Florida officials began their crackdown on pill mills, more than 1,000 fewer deaths occurred over 34 months, the study revealed.

“Curbing the operation of pill mills may be an effective way for states to reduce prescription narcotic overdose death rates and total narcotic overdose death rates,” said lead researcher Alene Kennedy-Hendricks, an assistant scientist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Deaths from narcotic painkillers and heroin have reached epidemic proportions, and pill mills are a major source of the problem, she said.

Findings from the study were published Dec. 21 in the American Journal of Public Health. Although the study found a link between the new, tougher laws and a reduction in overdose deaths, it didn’t prove a definitive cause-and-effect relationship.

The study authors said that 90 out of 100 doctors who purchased the most oxycodone in the United States were from Florida in 2010. Meanwhile, another study — this one from the Dec. 14 JAMA Internal Medicine — found that primary care physicians are by far the biggest prescribers of narcotic painkillers.

Deaths from drug overdoses recently hit a new high, a Dec. 18 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Last year, more than 47,000 Americans died from drug overdoses. More than six out of 10 overdose deaths involved narcotics, including prescription painkillers and heroin, the CDC research showed.

In 2010 and 2011, Florida passed laws giving the state oversight over pain clinics. They also restricted the prescribing of narcotic painkillers. At the same time, drug enforcement programs resulted in the arrest and prosecution of doctors operating these clinics, the researchers said.

Overdose deaths aren’t only from narcotic painkillers, Kennedy-Hendricks said. They also involve deaths from heroin. But as deaths from painkiller overdoses declined, deaths from heroin also went down, she said.

Some people are concerned that interventions to stop the non-medical use of prescription narcotics might produce unintended consequences, she added. For example, people addicted to narcotic painkillers might switch to heroin if their supply of prescription narcotics becomes restricted or too expensive, she said.

“However, we found that the state actions were associated with much lower total narcotic overdose death rates than we would have expected had Florida not implemented these interventions. It is possible that these actions targeting pill mills prevented new prescription narcotic addictions from developing, thus reducing the risk of heroin use,” Kennedy-Hendricks said.

Closing pill mills might be a good strategy, not only for reducing deaths from painkiller overdoses, but also reducing deaths from heroin, she said.

“States with high prescription narcotic overdose death rates should consider the extent to which pill mills are operating within their state,” Kennedy-Hendricks said.

The study compared Florida overdose trends to those in North Carolina. The researchers looked at the trends before and after pill mill laws were enacted in Florida. North Carolina has had similar trends in prescription painkiller overdose deaths, the researchers noted.

There were nearly 12,000 deaths in Florida and more than 3,700 deaths in North Carolina from narcotic painkillers or heroin between 2003 and 2012, the researchers said.

Over the nearly three years included in the study, an estimated 1,029 lives were saved in Florida, the investigators found. Moreover, the number of lives saved grew each year as new measures were taken to close pill mills, the researchers said.

From March until December 2010, the death rate from prescription painkiller overdoses in Florida was 7 percent lower than expected. In 2011, the rate was 20 percent lower and in 2012, 34.5 percent lower, the study found.

Deaths from heroin overdoses rose in both Florida and North Carolina starting in 2011. But, Florida’s rate was lower than had been anticipated, the researchers explained.

Dr. Scott Krakower, the assistant unit chief of psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y., called cracking down on pill mills a step in the right direction.

“Other states should follow similar preventive strategies to help stop pill mills,” he said.

Krakower also suggested greater access to naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of an overdose.

He added that resources to treat narcotic addiction are still lacking, especially among the most vulnerable — college students and young adults.

More information

For more about overdose deaths, visit the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1JpCalF

Study Touts Benefits of Group Prenatal Care

MONDAY, Dec. 21, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Young mothers and infants might get significant health benefits from group prenatal care, a new study indicates.

Group prenatal care includes all the same components as individual care. But it provides additional time for education and skill building, plus the opportunity to talk with other pregnant women and learn from their experience, according to the researchers.

“Few clinical interventions have had an impact on birth outcomes,” lead author Jeannette Ickovics, of the Yale University School of Public Health in New Haven, Conn., said in a university news release.

“Group prenatal care is related to improved health outcomes for mothers and babies, without adding risk,” she said. “If scaled nationally, group prenatal care could lead to significant improvements in birth outcomes, health disparities, and health care costs.”

The study, however, only found an association between better birth results and group prenatal care. It did not establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship.

For the study, published online Dec. 21 in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers compared outcomes among pregnant teens and women at 14 health centers in New York City who received either group prenatal care or traditional individual care.

Participants were aged 14 to 21 and lived in poor areas, but had no other known pregnancy health risks. The groups included eight to 12 women.

Compared to those who received individual care, women in group prenatal care were 33 percent less likely to have infants who were small for gestational age, the study found. They also had a lower risk of preterm delivery or low birthweight baby, and their infants spent less time in the neonatal intensive care unit.

The researchers also found that women in group prenatal care were more likely to wait an appropriate time before becoming pregnant again, reducing the risk that their next baby will be born prematurely.

Also, the more group prenatal care sessions pregnant women attended, the lower the risk of birth complications, the study authors determined.

Further research is needed to pinpoint why group prenatal care was associated with better outcomes for mothers and their babies, the researchers said.

More information

The U.S. Office on Women’s Health has more about prenatal care.

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1Ysf3Dr

FDA Lifts 30-Year Ban on Blood Donations by Gay Men

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Dec. 21, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Gay and bisexual men who have abstained from sex for one year will now be allowed to donate blood in the United States.

The new policy, announced Monday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, reverses a three-decades-old ban on donations from this group of men that traces back to the start of the AIDS epidemic.

“The FDA’s responsibility is to maintain a high level of blood product safety for people whose lives depend on it,” FDA Acting Commissioner Stephen Ostroff said in an agency news release. “We have taken great care to ensure this policy revision is backed by sound science and continues to protect our blood supply.”

The FDA said it was changing its policy based on data from other countries that show allowing such donations would not increase the risk of HIV-tainted blood entering America’s blood supply.

FDA officials have estimated that about half of the people previously barred from donating blood would be able to donate under the new policy.

“We’ve taken great care to ensure that the revised policy continues to protect our blood supply,” Dr. Peter Marks, deputy director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said during a news conference Monday.

The new recommendation includes “a 12-month deferral period for the most recent sexual contact for men who have sex with men, rather than the existing indefinite deferral,” Marks added.

“As we recommend these changes, we are reaffirming a commitment to further progressing blood donor deferral policies as new scientific information becomes available,” Marks said.

The change will also better align the FDA’s donation policy for gay and bisexual men with its policies regarding other people potentially exposed to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, officials said.

For example, there’s currently a maximum one-year deferral policy in the United States for blood donations by men who have had sex with an HIV-positive woman or commercial sex workers. The same goes for women who have had sex with HIV-positive men.

However, sexually active gay men in a monogamous relationship would not be allowed to donate blood under the new policy.

The FDA said it will also implement a national blood surveillance system that will help the agency monitor the effect of the policy change and ensure the safety of the blood supply, health officials said.

The American Red Cross has found that the risk of an HIV-tainted blood donation getting into the national blood supply is about 1 in every 1.5 million units, agency officials said.

The FDA adopted a permanent ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men at the dawn of the AIDS crisis. Proponents of lifting the ban have said changing times and technological advances have rendered the decades-old policy obsolete. The FDA first proposed lifting the ban last December.

Other countries have already moved to limit their bans on blood donations from gay men in recent years. Canada has changed its policy to a five-year deferral policy (meaning blood donation is allowed if the man has not had sexual contact for five years); the United Kingdom and Australia have a one-year deferral policy; and South Africa has a six-month deferral policy.

More information

For more on blood donations from gay men, visit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1Ysf5eg

Gay Men Can Now Give Blood, After a Wait

Getty Images

The Food and Drug Administration has lifted a decades-long policy banning gay and bisexual men from donating blood in order to prevent HIV transmission through blood.

But men who have sex with men (MSM) will still be subject to a one-year waiting period from the date of their last sexual encounter. “Based on the evidence now available, FDA has changed its recommendation from the indefinite deferral for MSM to a 12 month blood donor deferral since last MSM contact,” the FDA says. The government has revised its policies on several occasions over the last decade and this is just the latest step. According to the FDA, the policy was reconsidered in 2010.

The government affairs director of the Human Rights Coalition called the change a “step in the right direction.”

“This new policy prevents men from donating life-saving blood based solely on their sexual orientation rather than actual risk to the blood supply,”said David Stacy, HRC’s Government Affairs Director. “While it’s a step in the right direction toward an ideal policy that reflects the best scientific research, it still falls far short of a fully acceptable solution because it continues to stigmatize gay and bisexual men.”

Under the new recommendations, people who have ever tested positive for HIV, exchanged sex for money or drugs, and other factors are barred from donating blood. Additionally, people who have gotten a tattoo or piercing within the past year are subjected to a one-year waiting period. HIV is transmitted through exchanges of bodily fluid including semen, vaginal discharge, and blood.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1JprCmC

Is This Conditioner Really Causing Women’s Hair to Fall Out? A Dermatologist Weighs In

More Evidence That Time-to-Treatment Is Crucial for Stroke

MONDAY, Dec. 21, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Stroke patients have worse outcomes when delays occur in restoring blood flow to the brain, a new study says.

Dutch researchers looked at 500 people who suffered a stroke caused by blocked blood flow to the brain — what’s known as an ischemic stroke, the most common form.

About half of the patients received intra-arterial treatment (IAT), which involves inserting a catheter into an artery to either remove the clot, to deliver clot-busting drugs near the site of the blockage, or both. The other patients did not receive IAT.

The study found that the average amount of time needed between the onset of a stroke and the moment the patient first received the catheter was about four hours and 20 minutes, and the average time it took for blood flow to be restored to the brain was five hours and 40 minutes.

There was a 6 percent lower chance of a good outcome for patients for every hour of delay in restoring blood flow to the brain, concluded a team led by Dr. Diederik Dippel, of Erasmus MC University Medical Center in Rotterdam.

“This study highlights the critical importance of reducing delays in time to IAT for patients with acute ischemic stroke,” they wrote. “Our findings imply that patients with acute ischemic stroke should undergo immediate diagnostic workup and IAT.”

One expert in the United States agreed.

“Stroke is a medical emergency, and approximately 2 million brain cells are lost every minute that it goes untreated,” said Dr. Sanskriti Mishra, stroke fellow at North Shore-LIJ’s Cushing Neuroscience Institute in Manhasset, N.Y.

“It is essential that people are aware of the symptoms of a stroke — such as sudden onset of facial droop, arm weakness, speech difficulty — so they can seek medical care urgently,” she said.

“This study shows that delay in treatment aimed at restoring blood flow in the brain reduces chances of recovery from stroke,” Mishra said. “Patients with stroke should undergo an immediate evaluation for lifesaving procedures if their arteries are blocked by a blood clot.”

The study was published online Dec. 21 in the journal JAMA Neurology.

More information

The American Heart Association, American Stroke Association has more about stroke treatments.

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1MrTp5X

Being ‘Fat But Fit’ Won’t Cut Your Risk of Premature Death

MONDAY, Dec. 21, 2015 (HealthDay News) — New research seems to contradict the idea that people might escape the health hazards associated with obesity if they’re “fat but fit.”

The new study suggests that the health benefits of physical fitness are offset by obesity. No matter their fitness level, normal-weight men had a lower risk of dying during the study than did the most physically fit obese men, the researchers said.

Still, it’s important to note that the study wasn’t designed to prove a cause-and-effect relationship. This type of study can only show a link between physical fitness and the risk of premature death.

Findings were published in the Dec. 20 issue of the International Journal of Epidemiology.

The study included more than 1.3 million Swedish men. Their health was followed for an average of almost 30 years, according to the researchers, led by Peter Nordstrom from Umea University in Sweden.

To measure aerobic fitness, the men rode an exercise bicycle until they were too tired to continue.

The men in the top 20 percent of aerobic fitness had a 48 percent lower risk of death from any cause during the study period compared with those in the bottom 20 percent, the investigators found.

However, the beneficial effects of physical fitness decreased as obesity increased, the researchers said. And, for the most obese, even the highest levels of physical fitness couldn’t provide health benefits to offset the risks from obesity.

The study authors concluded that being “fat but fit” still poses health risks.

More information

The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has more about the health risks of obesity.

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1MrTp5T

FDA Lifts Ban on Blood Donations by Gay Men