Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

{Researchers have projected that aggressively lowering blood pressure could help prevent more than 100,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.}

“The public health impact of adopting intensive treatment in the right patients is enormous,” says Adam Bress, University of Utah assistant professor of population health sciences.

Bress and his fellow experts from institutions across the country built upon the landmark Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT), which found that decreasing blood pressure to less than 120 mmHg compared to 140 mmHg reduced heart attack, stroke and death in people that were at high risk. But — until now — the potential number of lives that could be saved if SPRINT-based intensive treatment were fully implemented among eligible U.S. adults was unknown.

The University of Utah-led team of researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 to 2006 conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics. Using the science of survey design, they focused on about 2,000 men and women who met the SPRINT eligibility criteria to determine the projected 107,500 lives saved each year.

The leading cause of death in the U.S. is heart disease. In past decades, doctors had typically worked to keep patients’ blood pressure less than 140 mmHg. SPRINT concluded that there could be a 27 percent reduction in mortality through the intensive blood pressure regimen.

“The lifetime risk of high blood pressure in the US is about 80 percent,” says the study’s senior author Richard Cooper, professor and chairman of Public Health Sciences at Loyola University Medical School, who collaborated with Bress. “Optimal management is one of the most significant contributions of medical care to patient survival. So we need to understand that small improvements in individual management can make a major impact on people’s health.”

To achieve blood pressure of 120 mmHg or less, it’s likely people would need to take three or four medications instead of two recommended for the higher blood pressure goal, the assistant professor said. They would likely also see the health care provider more frequently and need more lab tests. Though this would require some additional spending in the short-term, the overall cost of high blood pressure in the U.S. is large.

“Currently about 80 million Americans have higher blood pressure: one out of three,” Bress says. “And the treatment cost of hypertension is about $80 billion a year.”

The medications doctors would need are already available, safe, effective, and inexpensive, he added. In some individuals they cause side effects such as fatigue, cough and lower leg swelling.

Bress is the lead author of “Potential Deaths Averted and Serious Adverse Events from the adoption of the SPRINT Intensive Blood Pressure Regiment in the U.S.” which publishes online on Feb. 13 in the journal, Circulation.

He acknowledges that some concerns remain about dropping blood pressure so dramatically. Their analysis also showed that additional blood pressure medications increase risk for low blood pressure, fainting, and acute kidney injury. Currently, scientists are investigating whether the treatment impacts cognition.

“The point we’re trying to make when it comes to choices around intensive treatment is: Do the benefits of reducing your risk of stroke or early death outweigh the risks?” said Bress.

Cooper believes the treatment goal for systolic blood pressure should be reset to at least 130. Practical trials should be created to help monitor blood pressure at home and find systems — such as electronic recording — that make it easier for doctors to meet that target, he said.

Additional research is underway to determine who may best benefit from SPRINT protocol — whether that is someone who is of a certain age group, or someone that does not have diabetes or other conditions.

Bress and the researchers analyzed data from individuals who met SPRINT eligibility: they were of age 50 or older, at high risk of cardiovascular disease and without a history of diabetes or stroke.

How to implement the reduced blood pressure protocol also remains a question mark, Bress said. But he doesn’t think there should be a delay.

“What I fear is that if it takes 10 years to implement, we would not fully realize the potential public health gains. Within that time we could greatly reduce the number of deaths from high blood pressure.”

Source:Science Daily

{Having a healthy skin gives a woman the kind of glow that makes her the envy of others. It’s not impossible for a woman to have a beautiful skin; besides gene, it all depends on how well she takes care of herself.}

Every lady must observe these top 7 beauty rules if they want that healthy skin that glows.

1. Try as much as possible to protect yourself from the sun. The sun is probably the number one factor that can hurt a beautiful skin and cause wrinkles, patches, fine lines and sun spots.

According to the American Academy of Dermatology, the sun plays a major role in premature ageing of the skin.

2. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. If you want that healthy skin that glows, then you must replace junk foods with fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables are rich in nutrients that nourish your skin and antioxidants that help protect the skin.

3. Try as much as possible to sleep on your back. Sleeping with your face against the pillow can cause dark circles and patches around the eyes and face. It can restrict blood flow and result in poor blood circulation.

4. Wash your face every night. This will help remove the makeups and pollutants and other things that your skin might have collected during the day.

5. Moisturise your skin at least within 3 minutes of having your bath. It’ll help protect the skin from drying out and from the impact of the weather.

6. Avoid smoking; it doesn’t add any benefit to your life, rather it has so many detrimental effect on your skin. It could cause the skin to dry, damage the outer layer of the skin, constrict blood vessels, thereby depleting the skin of oxygen and vital nutrients.

7. Have enough sleep. All these tips mentioned above will be less effective if you don’t observe enough sleep. The quality of your sleep is very important. A 2015 study published in Clinical Experiments in Dermatology found that chronic poor sleep quality is associated with increased signs of intrinsic ageing, diminished skin barrier function and lower satisfaction with appearance.

Source:Elcrema

{A study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers has found that a pattern of gene variants associated with an “apple-shaped” body type, in which weight is deposited around the abdomen, rather than in the hips and thighs, increases the risk for type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease, as well as the incidence of several cardiovascular risk factors. The report appears in the February 14 issue of JAMA.}

“People vary in their distribution of body fat — some put fat in their belly, which we call abdominal adiposity, and some in their hips and thighs,” says Sekar Kathiresan, MD, director of the MGH Center for Genomic Medicine, associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and senior author of the JAMA report. “Abdominal adiposity has been correlated with cardiometabolic disease, but whether it actually has a role in causing those conditions was unknown. We tested whether genetic predisposition to abdominal adiposity was associated with the risk for type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease and found that the answer was a firm ‘yes’.”

While several observational studies have reported greater incidence of type 2 diabetes and heart disease among individuals with abdominal adiposity, they could not rule out the possibility that lifestyle factors — such as diet, smoking and a lack of exercise — were the actual causes of increased disease risk. It also could have been possible that individuals in the early stages of heart disease might develop abdominal adiposity because of a limited ability to exercise. The current study was designed to determine whether body type really could increase cardiometabolic risk.

To answer that question, the research team applied a genetic approach called mendelian randomization, which measures whether inherited gene variants actually cause outcomes such as the development of a disease. Using data from a previous study that identified 48 gene variants associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index — an established measure for abdominal adiposity — they developed a genetic risk score. They then applied that score to data from six major genome-wide association studies and to individual data from the U.K. Biobank — a total research group of more than 400,000 individuals — to determine any association between a genetic predisposition to abdominal adiposity and cardiometabolic disease and its risk factors.

The results clearly indicated that genetic predisposition to abdominal adiposity is associated with significant increases in the incidence of type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease, along with increases in blood lipids, blood glucose and systolic blood pressure. No association was found between the genetic risk score and lifestyle factors, and testing confirmed that only the abdominal adiposity effects of the identified gene variants were associated with cardiometabolic risk.

“These results illustrate the power of using genetics as a method of determining the effects of a characteristic like abdominal adiposity on cardiometabolic outcomes,” says lead author Connor Emdin, DPhil, of the MGH Center for Genomic Medicine and the Cardiology Division. “The lack of association between the body type genetic risk score and confounding factors such as diet and smoking provides strong evidence that abdominal adiposity itself contributes to causing type 2 diabetes and heart disease.”

Emdin continues, “Not only do these results allow us to use body shape as a marker for increased cardiometabolic risk, they also suggest that developing drugs that modify fat distribution may help prevent these diseases. Future research also could identify individual genes that could be targeted to improve body fat distribution to reduce these risks.”

Source:Science Daily