Cold and flu more serious in diabetics
Flu season is unpleasant for everyone, but if you have diabetes it can be even worse. If diabetics fail to manage their disease while sick, the complications can be serious, the American Diabetes Association warned in a statement this week.
“Your average person (with the flu) will spend three or four days at home but they’ll do okay,” said Dr. John Buse, president of medicine and science at the ADA. “In patients with diabetes, occasionally they even have to be hospitalized.”
Love, hope for shunned kids in India AIDS school
In a smart blue tunic and red ribbons in her hair, 12-year-old Komal’s laughing eyes hide a fear of death that stalks every student in her village school.
Within months or years she could be dead, but while she lives she is fulfilling a dream—of going to school again after she was expelled from her previous one because she was infected with HIV.
Aggression as rewarding as sex, food and drugs
New research from Vanderbilt University shows for the first time that the brain processes aggression as a reward - much like sex, food and drugs - offering insights into our propensity to fight and our fascination with violent sports like boxing and football.
The research will be published online the week of Jan. 14 by the journal Psychopharmacology.
“Aggression occurs among virtually all vertebrates and is necessary to get and keep important resources such as mates, territory and food,” Craig Kennedy, professor of special education and pediatrics, said. “We have found that the ‘reward pathway’ in the brain becomes engaged in response to an aggressive event and that dopamine is involved.”
Statins seen beneficial for nearly all diabetics
Statins—the best-selling class of cholesterol-fighting drugs—should be considered as standard therapy for all diabetics, apart from children and pregnant women, researchers said on Friday.
A group of British and Australian investigators said the largest study of its kind, involving a pooled analysis of clinical trials involving nearly 19,000 patients with diabetes, found there was a clear benefit in taking statins.
After five years, 42 fewer people with diabetes had major vascular events, such as heart attacks and strokes, for every 1,000 allocated statin therapy.
Heart risk factor control worse in diabetic women
Deaths from cardiovascular disease are declining among men with diabetes, but not women, and poorer control of blood pressure and cholesterol levels may be to blame, a new study suggests.
Among diabetic patients with existing cardiovascular disease, Dr. Assiamira Ferrara of Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California and colleagues found, women were 5.4 percent less likely than men to have systolic blood pressures at recommended levels, and 5.9 percent less likely to have their “bad” LDL-cholesterol under control.
Scientists associate 6 new genetic variants with heart disease risk factor
Using new techniques for rapidly scanning the human genome, researchers have associated levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, two fats in the blood, to 18 genetic variants, six of which represent new DNA regions never before associated with the traits. The findings, appearing in the January 13 advance online issue of Nature Genetics, help explain some of the variability in cholesterol and triglyceride levels that arises from genes. With the potential to help predict a patientТs genetic risk of heart disease, the six new loci may point to novel aspects of cholesterol metabolism and could also spur new cholesterol-lowering drugs.
Heart disease is a leading cause of death around the world. Researchers have known for decades that one of the strongest predictors of heart disease risk is the level of cholesterol in the blood. While differences in lifestyle, such as diet and exercise, can influence a personТs cholesterol levels, differences in genes can too. Some of these culprit genes are already known, but it is clear that many others remain to be found. УBy uncovering the genetic determinants of cholesterol levels and, in turn, heart disease risk, we may be able to identify high-risk patients who can benefit from early interventions, in addition to expanding our knowledge of cholesterol biology and opening doors to new treatments,Ф said first author Sekar Kathiresan, director of preventive cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and a genetics researcher in the Program in Medical and Population Genetics at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.
