Simple lifestyle changes can add a decade or more healthy years to the average lifespan, Canadian study shows

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ScienceDaily (Oct. 21, 2011) — Health prevention strategies to help Canadians achieve their optimal health potential could add a decade or more of healthy years to the average lifespan and save the economy billions of dollars as a result of reduced cardiovascular disease, says noted cardiologist Dr. Clyde Yancy.

Dr. Yancy, who will deliver the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada Lecture at the opening ceremonies of the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Vancouver on October 23, will tell delegates that people who follow seven simple steps to a healthy life can expect to live an additional 40 to 50 years after the age of 50.

"Achieving these seven simple lifestyle factors gives people a 90 per cent chance of living to the age of 90 or 100, free of not only heart disease and stroke but from a number of other chronic illnesses including cancer," says Dr. Yancy, a professor of medicine and chief of cardiology at the Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. He is also the past-president of the American Heart Association.

"By following these steps, we can compress life-threatening disease into the final stages of life and maintain quality of life for the longest possible time." He predicts that, if we act now, we can reverse the tide by 2020.

According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, every year in Canada about 250,000 potential years of life are lost due to heart disease and stroke, which are two of the three leading causes of death in Canada.

Canadians can achieve optimal health, says Dr. Yancy, by following these steps:

1. GET ACTIVE: Inactivity can shave almost four years off a person's expected lifespan. People who are physically inactive are twice as likely to be at risk for heart disease or stroke.

2. KNOW AND CONTROL CHOLESTEROL LEVELS: Almost 40 per cent of Canadian adults have high blood cholesterol, which can lead to the build up of fatty deposits in your arteries - increasing your risk for heart disease and stroke.

3. FOLLOW A HEALTHY DIET: Healthy eating is one of the most important things you can do to improve your health -- yet about half of Canadians don't meet the healthy eating recommendations.

4. KNOW AND CONTROL BLOOD PRESSURE: High blood pressure - often called a 'silent killer' because it has no warning signs or symptoms - affects one in five Canadians. By knowing and controlling your blood pressure, you can cut your risk of stroke by up to 40 per cent and the risk of heart attack by up to 25 per cent.

5. ACHIEVE AND MAINTAIN A HEALTHY WEIGHT: Almost 60 per cent of Canadian adults are either overweight or obese - major risk factors for heart disease and stroke. Being obese can reduce your life span by almost four years.

6. MANAGE DIABETES: By 2016 an estimated 2.4 million Canadians will live with diabetes.Diabetes increases the risk of high blood pressure, atherosclerosis (narrowing of the arteries), coronary artery disease, and stroke, particularly if your blood sugar levels are poorly controlled.

7. BE TOBACCO FREE: More than 37,000 Canadians die prematurely each year due to tobacco use, and thousands of non-smokers die each year from exposure to second-hand smoke. As soon as you become smoke-free, your risk of heart disease and stroke begins to decrease. After 15 years ,your risk will be nearly that of a non-smoker.

A call for focused prevention strategies

While this goal of optimal health has been achieved by fewer than 10 per cent of the population, "it demonstrates the striking potential that prevention has if it is broadly embraced," says Dr. Yancy. "We know how to prevent heart disease and stroke -- we now need to build the tools to empower our citizens to manage their risk and prevent heart disease."

Dr. Yancy calls on governments to invest in steady and focused prevention strategies. He says that necessary initiatives include a change in current sodium policies, continued progress in tobacco control initiatives, increased green space, and health education.

"Healthy living is key to preventing heart disease and stroke," says Bobbe Wood, president of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. "The Foundation is committed to raising awareness about heart health and to promoting public policies that facilitate healthy lifestyles and communities."

She says that the Foundation will continue to build on partnerships and policies that have led to a significant reduction of trans fats in the Canadian food supply; stronger tobacco control initiatives; healthy community design; and a continued reduction in the amount of salt in our food products, which has been achieved in part through Health Check™, the Foundation's flagship food information program.

Dr. Yancy adds that improved access to health care that focuses on prevention and control of important risk factors including high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes is also key.

Raising the alarm over looming costs of treating heart disease

Dr. Yancy will also raise the alarm over the looming cost of treating heart disease now and in the future.

With predictions that the direct medical cost of treating heart disease in the U.S. alone could climb to $818 billion in 2030, he says there is a health and economic imperative for governments and societies around the world to embrace prevention strategies.

Heart disease and stroke cost the Canadian economy more than $20.9 billion every year in physician services, hospital costs, lost wages and decreased productivity.

"The opportunity for prevention is not an unrealistic expectation," says Dr. Yancy. "Over the past 40 years the rates of heart disease and stroke have steadily declined." The rate has declined in Canada by 70 per cent since the mid-1950s. In the last decade alone, the rate has declined by 25 per cent.

Unfortunately, says Dr. Yancy, these benefits may be short-lived if the burden of risk, specifically obesity and diabetes, continues to grow, especially in children. "We need to act now."

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Biggest ever study shows no link between mobile phone use and tumors

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ScienceDaily (Oct. 20, 2011) — There is no link between long-term use of mobile phones and tumours of the brain or central nervous system, finds new research published online in the British Medical Journal.

In what is described as the largest study on the subject to date, Danish researchers found no evidence that the risk of brain tumours was raised among 358,403 mobile phone subscribers over an 18-year period.

The number of people using mobile phones is constantly rising with more than five billion subscriptions worldwide in 2010. This has led to concerns about potential adverse health effects, particularly tumours of the central nervous system.

Previous studies on a possible link between phone use and tumours have been inconclusive particularly on long-term use of mobile phones. Some of this earlier work took the form of case control studies involving small numbers of long-term users and were shown to be prone to error and bias. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently classified radio frequency electromagnetic fields, as emitted by mobile phones, as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

The only cohort study investigating mobile phone use and cancer to date is a Danish nationwide study comparing cancer risk of all 420,095 Danish mobile phone subscribers from 1982 until 1995, with the corresponding risk in the rest of the adult population with follow-up to 1996 and then 2002. This study found no evidence of any increased risk of brain or nervous system tumours or any cancer among mobile phone subscribers.

So researchers, led by the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Copenhagen, continued this study up to 2007.

They studied data on the whole Danish population aged 30 and over and born in Denmark after 1925, subdivided into subscribers and non-subscribers of mobile phones before 1995. Information was gathered from the Danish phone network operators and from the Danish Cancer Register.

Overall, 10,729 central nervous system tumours occurred in the study period 1990-2007.

When the figures were restricted to people with the longest mobile phone use -- 13 years or more -- cancer rates were almost the same in both long-term users and non-subscribers of mobile phones.

The researchers say they observed no overall increased risk for tumours of the central nervous system or for all cancers combined in mobile phone users.

They conclude: "The extended follow-up allowed us to investigate effects in people who had used mobile phones for 10 years or more, and this long-term use was not associated with higher risks of cancer.

"However, as a small to moderate increase in risk for subgroups of heavy users or after even longer induction periods than 10-15 years cannot be ruled out, further studies with large study populations, where the potential for misclassification of exposure and selection bias is minimised, are warranted."

In an accompanying editorial, Professors Anders Ahlbom and Maria Feychting at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden say this new evidence is reassuring, but continued monitoring of health registers and prospective cohorts is still warranted.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by BMJ-British Medical Journal.

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Journal References:

P. Frei, A. H. Poulsen, C. Johansen, J. H. Olsen, M. Steding-Jessen, J. Schuz. Use of mobile phones and risk of brain tumours: update of Danish cohort study. BMJ, 2011; 343 (oct19 4): d6387 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.d6387A. Ahlbom, M. Feychting. Mobile telephones and brain tumours. BMJ, 2011; 343 (oct19 4): d6605 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.d6605

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New study shows no simultaneous warming of northern and southern hemispheres as a result of climate change for 20,000 years

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ScienceDaily (Oct. 21, 2011) — A common argument against global warming is that the climate has always varied. "Temperatures rise sometimes and this is perfectly natural," is the usual line. However, Svante Björck, a climate researcher at Lund University in Sweden, has now shown that global warming, i.e. simultaneous warming events in the northern and southern hemispheres, have not occurred in the past 20 000 years, which is as far back as it is possible to analyse with sufficient precision to compare with modern developments.

Svante Björck's study thus goes 14 000 years further back in time than previous studies have done. "What is happening today is unique from a historical geological perspective," he says.

Svante Björck has gone through the global climate archives, which are presented in a large number of research publications, and looked for evidence that any of the climate events that have occurred since the end of the last Ice Age 20 000 years ago could have generated similar effects on both the northern and southern hemispheres simultaneously. It has not, however, been possible to verify this. Instead, he has found that when, for example, the temperature rises in one hemisphere, it falls or remains unchanged in the other.

"My study shows that, apart from the larger-scale developments, such as the general change into warm periods and ice ages, climate change has previously only produced similar effects on local or regional level," says Svante Björck.

As an example, let us take the last clear climate change, which took place between the years 1600 and 1900 and which many know as the Little Ice Age. Europe experienced some of its coldest centuries. While the extreme cold had serious consequences for agriculture, state economies and transport in the north, there is no evidence of corresponding simultaneous temperature changes and effects in the southern hemisphere. The climate archives, in the form of core samples taken from marine and lake sediments and glacier ice, serve as a record of how temperature, precipitation and concentration of atmospheric gases and particles have varied over the course of history, and are full of similar examples.

Instead it is during 'calmer' climatic periods, when the climate system is influenced by external processes, that the researchers can see that the climate signals in the archives show similar trends in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

"This could be, for example, at the time of a meteorite crash, when an asteroid hits the Earth or after a violent volcanic eruption when ash is spread across the globe. In these cases we can see similar effects around the world simultaneously," says Svante Björck.

Professor Björck draws parallels to today's situation. The levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are currently changing very rapidly. At the same time, global warming is occurring.

"As long as we don't find any evidence for earlier climate changes leading to similar simultaneous effects on a global scale, we must see today's global warming as an exception caused by human influence on the Earth's carbon cycle," says Svante Björck, continuing: "this is a good example of how geological knowledge can be used to understand our world. It offers perspectives on how the Earth functions without our direct influence and thus how and to what extent human activity affects the system

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S Björck. Current global warming appears anomalous in relation to the climate of the last 20000 years. Climate Research, 2011; 48 (1): 5 DOI: 10.3354/cr00873

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Blood-pressure-lowering drug after stroke aids recovery, study suggests

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ScienceDaily (Oct. 21, 2011) — A commonly prescribed blood pressure-lowering medication appears to kick start recovery in the unaffected brain hemisphere after a stroke by boosting blood vessel growth, a new University of Georgia study has found.

The discovery, based on a study using rats and published recently in the online journal PLoS ONE, occurred only because the team, led by Susan Fagan, professor of clinical and administrative pharmacy at the UGA College of Pharmacy, struck a new path in stroke research by examining the healthy side of brain after the stroke occurred.

"I'm very excited because I think we can harness the restorative properties of the contralesional hemisphere-the other side of the brain-with drug therapies," Fagan said. "When most researchers study stroke they compare the animal's side of the brain that's damaged to the opposite side, assuming that that side is normal or not affected."

For the study, Fagan and her team induced strokes in two groups of male Wistar rats by blocking a major artery in the brain. A third group of placebo, or sham, animals did not experience strokes so that scientists could compare healthy brain hemispheres across all groups. One group received a single dose of saline solution; the other received a dose of the blood pressure drug candesartan. The placebo group received no treatment.

Animals treated with candesartan displayed higher levels of growth factors that aid with the formation of new blood vessels in the brain, a result that confirmed that of earlier studies from the lab. However, the study revealed a previously unobserved phenomenon: Different types of growth factors dominated different hemispheres in the brain, which suggests that candesartan could have healing properties beyond the area of damage.

Doctors and researchers have sought to settle a long-standing debate over whether elevated blood pressure should be lowered in stroke victims. Lowering blood pressure too soon after a stroke could lessen amounts of critical oxygen to the brain. Fagan cited a large clinical trial conducted earlier this year by Scandinavian researchers who concluded that using candesartan to lower blood pressure early after stroke produced no real benefit. In order to bypass the blood pressure debate, Fagan's lab plans to pursue future research with drugs and doses that provide protection to the brain's blood vessels without lowering blood pressure.

The study also found that animals treated with candesartan had increased levels of a "pro-survival" protein in both brain hemispheres. The protein is responsible for helping neurons in the brain survive insults-like a stroke-and promote longer life. Fagan said the study contributes to a body of literature that finds new potential for drug therapy.

"We tell patients the reason they go to rehab after they've had a stroke is to retrain and make new connections so that they can get function back. Maybe it's because the other hemisphere takes over," Fagan said. "If we could stimulate that with drug therapy and make it even more so, it would help lots of people."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Georgia. The original article was written by Kathleen Raven.

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Weihua Guan, Payaningal R. Somanath, Anna Koza, Anna Goc, Azza B. El-Remessy, Adviye Ergul, Maribeth H. Johnson, Ahmed Alhusban, Sahar Soliman, Susan C. Fagan. Vascular Protection by Angiotensin Receptor Antagonism Involves Differential VEGF Expression in Both Hemispheres after Experimental Stroke. PLoS ONE, 2011; 6 (9): e24551 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0024551

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Exceptional cognitive and physical health in old age leaves immunological fingerprint, study finds

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ScienceDaily (Oct. 21, 2011) — Exceptional cognitive and physical function in old age leaves a tell-tale immunologic fingerprint, say researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC. Likewise, older adults who have mild impairments bear a distinct immunologic pattern, too, according to findings appearing in the online journal PLoS ONE, published by the Public Library of Science.

Old age is not synonymous with impairment and disability, noted lead investigator Abbe N. de Vallejo, Ph.D., associate professor of pediatrics and immunology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

"Our study indicates that getting older does not necessarily mean that the immune system gets weaker, as many of us assumed," he said. "The immune system is dynamic, and the changes it undergoes over time very much influence function."

For the project, the team collected blood samples from 140 participants who had been followed in the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS) for nearly two decades and were 78 to 94 years old. With only two participants younger than 82, the average age of the group was 86. The team also gathered information about the participants' health and function, medical history and hospitalizations, and self-rated health, and assessed their cognitive and physical function using standard tests.

Previous research has shown that with age, immune cells called T-cells become more like natural killer (NK) cells, which typically target tumor cells and virus-infected cells, Dr. de Vallejo said. A closer look in the new study shows that participants who were most physically and cognitively resilient had a dominant pattern of stimulatory NK receptors on the T-cell surface, and that these unusual T-cells can be activated directly through these NK receptors independently of the conventional ones. The functionally resilient elders also have a distinct profile of blood proteins called cytokines that reflect an immune-enhancing environment.

Conversely, the group that showed mild health impairment had a dominant pattern of inhibitory NK receptors on their T-cells, and they have a cytokine profile indicating a pro-inflammatory environment. Both of these immunologic features could suggest a greater susceptibility to illness.

"These findings indicate that there is remodeling or adaptation of the immune system as we age that can be either protective or detrimental," Dr. de Vallejo said. "Now we have an immunological fingerprint that can identify individuals who are more likely to stay physically and cognitively well."

He and his colleagues are now studying factors, such as genetics or traits developed during childhood that might influence the adaptation of the immune system with advancing age.

The team includes Anne B. Newman, M.D., professor and chair, Department of Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), and director of the Center for Aging and Population Health, as well as others from GSPH and the Pitt School of Medicine. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

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Abbe N. Vallejo, David L. Hamel, Robert G. Mueller, Diane G. Ives, Joshua J. Michel, Robert M. Boudreau, Anne B. Newman. NK-Like T Cells and Plasma Cytokines, but Not Anti-Viral Serology, Define Immune Fingerprints of Resilience and Mild Disability in Exceptional Aging. PLoS ONE, 2011; 6 (10): e26558 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0026558

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