Study Shows People Over Age 60 Need to Lift Weights More Often to Maintain Muscle Mass

WebMD Medical News

By Matt McMillen, Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD

The older you get, the more you may have to work to maintain your muscles, according to a new study.

Researchers report that men and women over the age of 60 have to lift weights more often than younger adults to maintain muscle mass and muscle size.

“Our data are the first to suggest that older adults require greater weekly maintenance dosing than younger individuals to maintain resistance-training-induced increases in muscle mass,” study co-researcher and physiologist Marcas Bamman, PhD, of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, says in a press release.

The study is published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

Preventing Muscle Loss

The researchers write that preventing sarcopenia — muscle loss that occurs as we get older — is “one of the most pressing challenges of biomedicine in our aging society.” And resistance training, such as lifting weights, is the best means of prevention. Read more »

Study Shows Reducing Salt Lowers Blood Pressure; Evidence Inconclusive on Preventing Heart Disease

WebMD Medical News

By Kathleen Doheny, Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Reducing salt intake in the diet produces a small decline in blood pressure, according to a new review of research. But the evidence is not conclusive on whether salt reduction has an effect on getting cardiovascular disease or dying from it, the researchers say.

The findings are not a call to eat salt with abandon, warns researcher Rod Taylor, PhD, MSc, professor of health services research at the University of Exeter in the U.K.

The review evaluated nearly 6,500 people and is published online in the American Journal of Hypertension and the Cochrane Database ofSystematic Reviews 2011.

Taylor suspects he found no strong evidence that salt reduction lowered heart disease risk and death because the numbers studied were too small. And those studied may have lowered salt intake at first but then slid back into old habits, he says. Read more »

Study Suggests Excessive Sitting May Increase the Risk for Blood Clots in the Lungs

WebMD Medical News

By Brenda Goodman, Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Maybe the couch should come with a warning label.

A flurry of recent research has shown that excessive sitting increases the odds of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, some kinds of cancer, and even premature death. Now a new study is adding another health risk to that list: pulmonary embolism (PE), or a blood clot in the lungs.

The study, of nearly 70,000 female nurses who were followed for 18 years, found that those who spent hours sitting and sedentary in their leisure time were much more likely to have blood clots in their lungs compared to those who were more active.

And the risk remained even after researchers adjusted their data to take into account other factors including body weight, heart disease, smoking, and the use of medications like blood thinners and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).

“Women who sat the most had more than twice the risk of PE compared to women who sat the least,” says study researcher Christopher Kabrhel, MD, an attending physician and assistant professor of surgery in the department of emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston. Read more »

Screenings Credited With Helping Reduce Colon Cancer Incidence, Death Rates in Recent Years

WebMD Medical News
By Bill Hendrick, Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

New diagnoses of colorectal cancer as well as deaths from the disease have declined dramatically in recent years, thanks in part to greater emphasis on screening procedures, a government report says.

Colorectal cancer is the second most deadly cancer, but it could fall from that position if more people were screened, the CDC says in a new Vital Signs report.

Disease incidence declined significantly from 2003 to 2007 in 35 states, the CDC says, and mortality dropped in 49 states as well as in Washington, D.C.

The rate of new cases of colorectal cancer fell from 52.3 per 100,000 in 2003 to 45.5 in 2007, the CDC says, resulting in nearly 66,000 fewer new cases of cancer in 2003-2007 compared to 2002. The disease’s death rate dropped from 19 per 100,000 in 2003 to 16.7 in 2007, meaning almost 32,000 fewer people died than expected during the period, compared with 2002. Read more »

Researchers Find Association Between Penile Length and Ratio of Length of Men’s Fingers

WebMD Medical News
By Jennifer Warner, Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

The ratio between the length of the index finger and the ring finger of men’s hands is associated with penis length, a study shows.

Researchers found that men with a lower ratio, or a shorter length of the index finger compared to the ring finger, tended to have a longer penile length.

The study is published in the Asian Journal of Andrology.

In earlier research, the ratio, known as the digit ratio, has been linked to sexual behavior or hormonal activity. A recent study linked digit ratio to facial attractiveness or “hotness,” and another found an association between digit ratio and prostate cancer risk.

Those findings have prompted some to suggest that digit ratio may serve as a marker for prenatal androgen or testosterone exposure.

“Based on this evidence we suggest that the digit ratio can predict adult penile size and that the effects of prenatal testosterone may in part explain the differences in penile length,” write study researcher In Ho Choi of Gachon University Hospital in Incheon, South Korea, and colleagues. Read more »

Expert Panel Concludes Soy Helps Menopausal Symptoms, May Lower Cancer Risk, Help Cognition

WebMD Medical News
By Kathleen Doheny, Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Soy appears to help midlife women deal with hot flashes and night sweats, according to a new report.

However, the evidence for other potential benefits of soy — such as effects on heart and bone health — is not clear, a panel of experts has concluded.

”It gets a good score for [menopausal] symptoms,” says researcher Wulf Utian, MD, PhD, ScD, a consultant in women’s health and executive director emeritus of the North American Menopause Society. ”But the data is really not strong to give a high score for any of the rest.”

With a working group of experts in the field, Utian combed through evidence during a two-day symposium in late 2010 to evaluate the health benefits of soy for women at midlife.

The report is published in the journal Menopause.

Benefits of Soy: The Scorecard

The working group evaluated the evidence on soy as it affects menopausal symptoms, breast and endometrial cancer risk, hardening of the arteries, bone loss, and mental abilities. Read more »

Study Suggests Genetic Mutations May Be Linked to Ovarian Cancer

WebMD Medical News
By Kathleen Doheny, Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD

Multiple genetic mutations appear to be involved in the development of ovarian cancer, according to a new large-scale analysis of tumor samples.

Researchers from the Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network looked at 489 high-grade serous ovarian adenocarcinomas (HGS-OvCa). These are a kind of epithelial ovarian cancer, the most common kind.

Ovarian cancer is the fifth-leading cause of cancer death among U.S. women, the researchers write in the journal Nature.

Nearly 22,000 new cases were found in the U.S. in 2010, according to estimates. Nearly 14,000 U.S. women died from the cancer last year, the researchers report.

After analyzing the samples, the researchers found that mutations in a gene known as TP53 predominated. It was found in 96% of the tumor samples.

However, the researchers found mutations in nine other genes, including NF1, BRCA1 and BRCA2, RB1, and CDK12. BRCA1 and BRCA2 were mutated in 22% of the samples. The other seven mutated genes identified were only found in 2% to 6% of the samples.

”The mutation spectrum marks HGS-OvCa as completely distinct from other ovarian cancer histological subtypes,” the researchers write. Read more »

Study Shows Prediabetes Patients Can Benefit From Lifestyle Changes and Taking Diabetes Drug

WebMD Medical News

By Charlene Laino, Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD

People with prediabetes can save thousands of dollars in medical costs by taking the diabetes drug metformin or making lifestyle changes, a new study shows.

Treatment with the inexpensive drug metformin, which lowers blood sugar levels, reduced costs by $1,700 over a decade, the researchers say. Intensive lifestyle changes, such as participating in tailored weight loss and exercise programs, saved $2,600 per person.

The study also showed that people who ate right and exercised had the highest scores on quality-of-life questionnaires that measure physical and mental functioning.

The cost savings are in line with other standard prevention strategies such as childhood immunizations and beta-blocker treatment in people who have had a heart attack, says William Herman, MD, professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Read more »

Study Shows Hearing Loss Is More Common in People With Diabetes

WebMD Medical News

By Charlene Laino, Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD

Hearing loss is more than twice as common in people with diabetes than in people without the condition, according to an analysis of 13 studies.

The study does not prove cause and effect. But it’s a good idea for diabetes patients to be screened routinely for hearing loss, just as they are for eye and kidney problems, says researcher Hirohito Sone, MD, PHD, of Tsukuba University Hospital Mito Medical Center in Ibaraki, Japan.

Smaller studies have linked diabetes to hearing loss, “but no one knew just how much higher their risk is, compared with people without diabetes,” he tells WebMD.

So Japanese researchers pooled the results of 13 studies involving nearly 8,800 people with hearing impairment, of whom more than 1,000 had diabetes, and 23,839 people without hearing impairment, of whom nearly 2,500 had diabetes. The large numbers allowed them to observe trends that aren’t apparent in smaller studies. Read more »

Studies Show Dapagliflozin May Help Keep Blood Sugar Levels Under Control

WebMD Medical News

By Charlene Laino, Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD

A new type of diabetes drug is effective in controlling blood sugar, but it is associated with higher rates of certain infections, researchers say.

The drug, dapagliflozin, is designed to lower blood sugar by increasing the amount of glucose excreted in the urine. On July 19, it will be the first in its class to be evaluated for approval by an FDA advisory committee.

At the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association, researchers presented results of a two-year study comparing three doses of the drug to placebo, when added to a common diabetes drug, metformin. Another two-year study compared dapagliflozin with glipizide, another common diabetes drug.

The studies showed dapagliflozin led to substantially greater improvements in blood sugar, as measured by hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels, compared with placebo or other diabetes medications. Read more »