Personal Health: News and Notes
Researchers study the link
between weight and dementia
Alzheimer's researchers call it the "obesity paradox." Being overweight in middle age increases the odds of developing dementia, but people who are overweight late in life have lower risk.
In a study published in last week's Neurology, researchers from the University of Kansas Medical Center analyzed the relationship between weight and dementia among 506 people participating in a trial of brain imaging techniques and tests of cerebrospinal fluid that measure biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease.
They found that lower body mass index was associated with Alzheimer's biomarkers both in people with mild cognitive impairment and in those with no outward signs of the disease. They did not ask whether the patients had lost weight.
They theorized that, early in its course, Alzheimer's may lead to systemic metabolic changes. Cognitive impairment in older people who remain overweight may result from a more complex interplay of factors, including cerebrovascular disease.
- Stacey Burling
Most state police cars are
not equipped with defibrillators
Police are called upon to perform many tasks besides fighting crime, lately including the use of automated external defibrillators on people who suffer cardiac arrest.
But at the state police level, most agencies do not have cars equipped with the devices, a new University of Pennsylvania survey finds.
Of the 46 state police agencies that responded to the survey, just 15 of them - about one-third - reported having vehicles with defibrillators. Of those 15 agencies, eight did not have the devices in most of their cars.
On the plus side, 35 of the agencies said they had trained their officers in defibrillator use, and 44 of them reported training officers in CPR. Preliminary findings were presented this month at an American Heart Association meeting.
- Tom Avril
Crash diet helped morbidly obese
avoid postoperative problems
Morbidly obese patients who adhered to a special crash diet for two weeks before gastric bypass surgery had fewer postoperative complications than patients who ate their usual diet, according to a study in the current Archives of Surgery.
The study, conducted at five European bariatric centers and led by researchers from Belgium, enrolled 298 patients undergoing the same type of gastric bypass. The low-cal diet group consumed just 800 calories a day in the form of five vitamin-fortified shakes.
Although the two groups' average weight was the same the day before surgery, the diet group had dropped almost 11 pounds before surgery. What's more, the diet group had only eight post-op complications such as wound infection, compared with 18 for the control group.
Surgeons perceived that operating on the diet group was easier, even though operating times and surgical complication rates were about the same for both groups.
The researchers concluded that a short-term, low-calorie diet regimen "should be recommended" for bariatric surgery patients.
- Marie McCullough
Penn scientists think they know why psoriasis increases risk of heart disease nolead begins
People with psoriasis, a common skin condition that causes redness and irritation, are known to have an increased risk of heart disease and stroke.
Now University of Pennsylvania researchers believe they have found a clue to the link: the systemic inflammation that causes psoriasis also appears to reduce the ability of "good" HDL (high density lipoprotein) to collect any unused cholesterol and ferry it to the liver for excretion. This process is known as "reverse cholesterol transport."
In a study presented this month at an American Heart Association meeting, Penn researchers measured the reverse cholesterol transport of 78 psoriasis patients and 84 healthy control subjects.
This cholesterol-fighting function was 25 percent lower in the psoriasis patients, even though cholesterol tests showed they had normal lipid (blood fat) profiles.
"Now we may finally be able to identify and ultimately treat the pathways by which psoriasis increases [heart disease] risks," said Joel Gefland, a dermatologist and epidemiologist who was senior author of the study. - M.M.