Exercise is Vital in Elderly

A study by Koohass et al published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology reports that exercise contributes immensely in the protection of the cardiovascular system.

The investigators followed a cohort of 5,344 for15-years (median 10 years).  Their ages ranged between 55 and 97, and none of the participants had heart disease at the beginning of the study.  During the study period 866 (16.2%) of the participants experienced a cardiovascular (CVD) event. Overweight and obese participants with low physical activity had a higher CVD risk than normal weight participants with high physical activity. Overweight and obese participants with high physical activity did not show a higher CVD risk.

Their findings suggest that there is no link between the body mass index (BMI) alone and heart disease, but found that physical activity was tied to a lower risk of heart disease, regardless of BMI.

The authors concluded that physical activity has a beneficial impact of on our cardiovascular system and outweighs the negative impact of BMI among middle-aged and elderly individuals.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2047487317693952

Life expectancy keeps rising

Research by Kontis et al published in the Lancet predicts that life expectancy in rich countries will continue rising.

According to their forecasting models life expectancy is projected to increase in 35 industrialized countries.  There is a 90% probability that life expectancy at birth among South Korean women in 2030 will be higher than 87 years, and a 57% probability that it will be higher than 90 years. The projected life expectancy of French, Spanish and Japanese women are close to the South Korean women.

There is a greater than 95% probability that life expectancy at birth among men in Hungary, South Korea, Australia, and Switzerland will surpass 80 years in 2030, and a greater than 27% probability that it will surpass 85 years.

Of the countries studied, the USA, Japan, Sweden, Greece, Macedonia, and Serbia have some of the lowest projected life expectancy gains for both men and women.

The female life expectancy advantage over men is likely to shrink by 2030 in every country except Mexico, where female life expectancy is predicted to increase more than male life expectancy, and in Chile, France, and Greece where the two sexes will see similar gains.

Americans will gain a couple of years of life expectancy between 2010 and 2030 with women living to 83 and men to 76 years.  The reasons for the US lag are not known but the use of opioids, alcoholism and obesity are among the likely causes.

Nations such as China, Russia and India were not included in their study because of lack of adequate data.

While scientists once thought that average life expectancy beyond 90 was not possible, medical advances including good nutrition and social programs make continued increases in longevity real thus careful planning for health, social services and pensions is required.

Alcohol abuse in heart diseases

A study by Whitman et al published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology suggests, that abusing alcohol increases the likelihood of suffering atrial fibrillation, heart attack or congestive heart failure.

The study was based on the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project database of Californians aged 21 and older who had outpatient surgery, emergency room treatment or inpatient hospital care between 2005 and 2009.

 Among 14,727,591 patients, 268,084 (1.8%) had alcohol abuse. After multivariable adjustment, the investigators found that alcohol abusers were twice as likely to have atrial fibrillation; 1.4 times more likely to have a heart attack; and 2.3 times more likely to have congestive heart failure than non alcohol abusers.

The authors concluded that alcohol abuse does increase the risk of atrial fibrillation, myocardial infarction, and congestive heart failure.  Given that about 600,000 Americans have a heart attack every year, and an estimated 3 million have atrial fibrillation and about 5.7 million have heart failure, the authors suggest that efforts to moderate alcohol use might result in significant reduction of these common cardiovascular diseases.

Top Three Posts

Since I started Medical News Monthly in 2014 I have uploaded 28 news items.  The three most popular posts and their links are listed below:

Ebola Outbreak

http://medicalnewsmonthly.blogspot.gr/2014/08/ebola-outbreak.html

The Mediterranean Diet

http://medicalnewsmonthly.blogspot.gr/2014/07/the-mediterranean-diet.html

WHO Report on Antimicrobial Resistance

http://medicalnewsmonthly.blogspot.gr/2014/05/who-report-on-antimicrobial-resistance.html

Most of the visitors to my blog were from United States, followed by Greece, Russia, France, Ireland, Poland, Macedonia, Germany, India, and Switzerland in that order. 

Cancer may become the leading cause of death by 2020

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) looked at data for the five leading causes of death (heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases, and accidents) which together account for 63 percent of all deaths in the United States,. 

They used mortality data, population estimates and projections to estimate and predict heart disease and cancer deaths from 1969 through 2020.

The report indicates that fewer people died prematurely from cancer, stroke and heart disease between 2010 and 2014.

They predicted that from 1969 through 2020, the number of heart disease deaths would decrease 21.3% among men and 13.4% among women while the number of cancer deaths would increase 91.1% among men and 101.1% among women. They suggest that cancer would become the leading cause of death around 2016.

In 2014, more than 614,000 Americans died of heart disease and approximately 592,000 died of cancer that year.  However, in 2016, almost 601,000 Americans may die as a result of cancer, while more than 597,000 may die from heart disease.  Thus cancer could surpass heart disease as the leading cause of death among Americans this year, according to the report.

The authors conclude that the risk of death declined more steeply for heart disease than cancer over the past 4 decades. If current trends continue, cancer will become the leading cause of death by 2020.