Exercise and other lifestyle habits that may add over 10 years to your life

Agencies

May 1, 2018

Eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, maintaining the right body weight, not drinking too much alcohol, and not smoking during adulthood may add over a decade to the life expectancy of a person, a US study claims.

Researchers led by Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health also found that US women and men who maintained the healthiest lifestyles were 82% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and 65% less likely to die from cancer when compared with those with the least healthy lifestyles over the course of the roughly 30-year study period.

The study published in the journal Circulation is the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of adopting low-risk lifestyle factors on life expectancy in the US. Researchers analysed 34 years of data from 78,865 women and 27 years of data from 44,354 men.

They looked at how five low-risk lifestyle factors - not smoking, low body mass index (18.5-24.9 kilogramme per square metre), 30 minutes or more per day of moderate to vigorous physical activity, moderate alcohol intake (up to one glass of wine per day for women, or two glasses for men), and a healthy diet - might impact mortality.

For study participants who did not adopt any of the low-risk lifestyle factors, the researchers estimated that life expectancy at age 50 was 29 years for women and 25.5 years for men.

However, for those who adopted all five low-risk factors, life expectancy at age 50 was projected to be 43.1 years for women and 37.6 years for men, researchers said.

Women who maintained all five healthy habits gained, on average, 14 years of life, and men who did so gained 12 years, compared with those who did not maintain healthy habits, they said.

Compared with those who did not follow any of the healthy lifestyle habits, those who followed all five were 74% less likely to die during the study period.

The researchers also found that there was a dose-response relationship between each individual healthy lifestyle behaviour and a reduced risk of early death.

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Crowded homes, poor neighbourhoods linked to COVID-19: Study

Agencies

June 21,2020

Lower neighbourhood socioeconomic status and greater household crowding increase the risk of becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, warn researchers.

"Our study shows that neighbourhood socioeconomic status and household crowding are strongly associated with risk of infection," said study lead author Alexander Melamed from Columbia University in the US.

"This may explain why Black and Hispanic people living in these neighbourhoods are disproportionately at risk for contracting the virus," Melamed added.

For the findings, published in the journal JAMA, the researchers examined the relationships between COVID-19 infection and neighbourhood characteristics in 396 women who gave birth during the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak in New York City. Since March 22, all women admitted to the hospitals for delivery have been tested for the virus, which gave the researchers the opportunity to detect all infections -- including infections with no symptoms -- in a defined population

The strongest predictor of COVID-19 infection among these women was residence in a neighbourhood where households with many people are common.The findings showed that women who lived in a neighbourhood with high household membership were three times more likely to be infected with the virus. Neighbourhood poverty also appeared to be a factor, the researchers said.Women were twice as likely to get COVID-19 if they lived in neighbourhoods with a high poverty rate, although that relationship was not statistically significant due to the small sample size.

The study revealed that there was no association between infection and population density.

"New York City has the highest population density of any city in the US, but our study found that the risks are related more to density in people's domestic environments rather than density in the city or within neighbourhoods," says co-author Cynthia Gyamfi-Bannerman."

The knowledge that SARS-CoV-2 infection rates are higher in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and among people who live in crowded households could help public health officials target preventive measures," the authors wrote.

Recently, another study published in the Journal of the American Planning Association, showed that dense areas were associated with lower COVID-19 death rates.

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WHO suspends HCQ clinical trial on COVID-19 patients

Agencies

May 26,2020

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Director-General, said that a clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) on COVID-19 patients has come to "a temporary pause", while the safety data of the the anti-malaria drug was being reviewed.

According to the WHO chief, The Lancet medical journal on May 22 had published an observational study on HCQ and chloroquine and its effects on COVID-19 patients that have been hospitalized, reports Xinhua news agency.

The authors of the study reported that among patients receiving the drug, when used alone or with a macrolide, they estimated a higher mortality rate.

"The Executive Group of the Solidarity Trial, representing 10 of the participating countries, met on Saturday (May 23) and has agreed to review a comprehensive analysis and critical appraisal of all evidence available globally," Tedros said in a virtual press conference on Monday.

The review will consider data collected so far in the Solidarity Trial and in particular robust randomized available data, to adequately evaluate the potential benefits and harms from this drug, he said.

"The Executive Group has implemented a temporary pause of the HCQ arm within the Solidarity Trial while the safety data is reviewed by the Data Safety Monitoring Board. The other arms of the trial are continuing," Tedros added.

WHO initiated the Solidarity Trial, a plan to evaluate the safety and efficacy of four drugs and drug combinations against COVID-19 more than two months ago, which include HCQ.

According to the WHO, over 400 hospitals in 35 countries are actively recruiting patients and nearly 3,500 patients have been enrolled from 17 countries under the Solidarity Trial.

Tedros added that the safety concern over the drug related only to the use of HCQ and chloroquine in COVID-19, and "these drugs are accepted as generally safe for use in patients with autoimmune diseases or malaria".

"WHO will provide further updates as we know more," he added.

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