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Lack of sleep doubles heart disease risk in men: Study

Agencies
August 27, 2018

London, Aug 27: Middle-aged men who sleep less than five hours a night have twice the risk of developing a major cardiovascular event such as heart attack or stroke, a study has found.

Previous studies have generated conflicting evidence on whether short sleep is associated with a greater chance of having a future cardiovascular event. The study investigated this relationship in 50-year-old men.

"For people with busy lives, sleeping may feel like a waste of time but our study suggests that short sleep could be linked with future cardiovascular disease," said Moa Bengtsson, of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

In 1993, 50 per cent of all men born in 1943 and living in Gothenburg were randomly selected to participate in the study.

Of the 1,463 invited, 798 (55 per cent) men agreed to take part. Participants underwent a physical examination and completed a questionnaire on current health conditions, average sleep duration, physical activity, and smoking.

The men were divided into four groups according to their self-estimated average sleep duration at the start of the study: five or less hours, six hours, seven to eight hours, and more than eight hours.

Participants were followed-up for 21 years for the occurrence of major cardiovascular events, which included heart attack, stroke, hospitalisation due to heart failure, coronary revascularization, or death from cardiovascular disease.

High blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, current smoking, low physical activity, and poor sleep quality were more common in men who slept five or fewer hours per night compared to those who got seven to eight hours.

Compared to those with normal sleep duration, men who slept five or fewer hours per night had a two-fold higher risk of having a major cardiovascular event by age 71.

The risk remained doubled after adjusting for cardiovascular risk factors at the start of the study including obesity, diabetes, and smoking.

"Men with the shortest sleep duration at the age of 50 were twice as likely to have had a cardiovascular event by age 71 than those who slept a normal amount, even when other risk factors were taken into account," said Bengtsson.

"In our study, the magnitude of increased cardiovascular risk associated with insufficient sleep is similar to that of smoking or having diabetes at age 50," she said.

"This was an observational study so based on our findings we cannot conclude that short sleep causes cardiovascular disease, or say definitively that sleeping more will reduce risk," she added.

"However, the findings do suggest that sleep is important -- and that should be a wake-up call to all of us," Bengtsson said.

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News Network
February 12,2020

Washington, Feb 12: People who are optimistic may contribute to the health of their partners, staving off the risk factors leading to Alzheimer's disease, dementia and cognitive decline as they grow old together, according to a study.

The research, published in the Journal of Personality, followed nearly 4,500 heterosexual couples from the US Health and Retirement Study for up to eight years.

The researchers found a potential link between being married to an optimistic person and preventing the onset of cognitive decline, due to a healthier environment at home.

"We spend a lot of time with our partners.They might encourage us to exercise, eat healthier or remind us to take our medicine," said William Chopik, an assistant professor at the Michigan State University in the US.

"When your partner is optimistic and healthy, it can translate to similar outcomes in your own life. You actually do experience a rosier future by living longer and staving off cognitive illnesses," Chopik said.

An optimistic partner may encourage eating healthy foods, or working out together to develop healthier lifestyles, the researchers said.

For example, if a person quits smoking or starts exercising, their partner is close to following suit, they said.

"We found that when you look at the risk factors for what predicts things like Alzheimer's disease or dementia, a lot of them are things like living a healthy lifestyle," Chopik said.

"Maintaining a healthy weight and physical activity are large predictors.There are some physiological markers as well. It looks like people who are married to optimists tend to score better on all of those metrics," he said.

The researchers said there is a sense where optimists lead by example, and their partners follow their lead.

They also suggest that when couples recall shared experiences together, richer details from the memories emerge.

Chopik noted while there is a heritable component to optimism, there is some evidence to suggest that it's a trainable quality.

"There are studies that show people have the power to change their personalities, as long as they engage in things that make them change," Chopik said.

"Part of it is wanting to change. There are also intervention programs that suggest you can build up optimism," he added.

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Agencies
June 23,2020

The record levels of new daily COVID-19 cases are due to the fact that the pandemic is peaking in a number of big countries at the same time and reflect a change in the virus' global activity, the World Health Organisation said.

At a media briefing on Monday, WHO's emergencies chief Dr Michael Ryan said that the numbers are increasing because the epidemic is developing in a number of populous countries at the same time.

Some countries have attributed their increased caseload to more testing, including India and the US But Ryan dismissed that explanation.

We do not believe this is a testing phenomenon, he said, noting that numerous countries have also noted marked increases in hospital admissions and deaths neither of which cannot be explained by increased testing.

There definitely is a shift in that the virus is now very well established, Ryan said. The epidemic is now peaking or moving towards a peak in a number of large countries.

He added the situation was definitely accelerating in a number of countries, including the US and others in South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

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Agencies
August 2,2020

Washington, Aug 2: Children under the age of five have between 10 to 100 times greater levels of genetic material of the coronavirus in their noses compared to older children and adults, a study in JAMA Pediatrics said Thursday.

Its authors wrote this meant that young children might be important drivers of Covid-19 transmission within communities -- a suggestion at odds with the current prevailing narrative.

The paper comes as the administration of US President Donald Trump is pushing hard for schools and daycare to reopen in order to kickstart the economy.

Between March 23 and April 27, researchers carried out nasal swab tests on 145 Chicago patients with mild to moderate illness within one week of symptom onset.

The patients were divided into three groups: 46 children younger than five-years-old, 51 children aged five to 17 years, and 48 adults aged 18 to 65 years.

The team, led by Dr Taylor Heald-Sargent of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital, observed, "a 10-fold to 100-fold greater amount of SARS-CoV-2 in the upper respiratory tract of young children."

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The authors added that a recent lab study had demonstrated that the more viral genetic material was present, the more infectious virus could be grown.

It has also previously been shown that children with high viral loads of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are more likely to spread the disease.

"Thus, young children can potentially be important drivers of SARS-CoV-2 spread in the general population," the authors wrote.

"Behavioral habits of young children and close quarters in school and daycare settings raise concern for SARS-CoV-2 amplification in this population as public health restrictions are eased," they concluded.

The new findings are at odds with the current view among health authorities that young children -- who, it has been well established, are far less likely to fall seriously ill from the virus -- don't spread it much to others either.

However, there has been fairly little research on the topic so far.

One recent study in South Korea found children aged 10 to 19 transmitted Covid-19 within households as much as adults, but children under nine transmitted the virus at lower rates.

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