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Quitting smoking in 60s can still extend life: study

[email protected] (Agencies)
November 30, 2016

Washington, Nov 30: Smokers can improve their life expectancy even if they kick the butt in their 60s, claims a new study.

smokingResearchers at National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US also suggest that people aged 70 or older currently smoking were more than three times more likely to die than never-smokers.

They reviewed data for more than 160,000 individuals aged 70 and over from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study.

They completed a questionnaire in 2004-2005 detailing their smoking use, and reported deaths were tracked until the end of 2011.

Analyses conducted between 2014 and 2016 correlated age at death with self-reported age at smoking initiation and cessation and amount smoked after 70 years of age.

The 2004-2005 questionnaire assessed smoking intensity in cigarettes per day and smoking history through nine age periods.

For this study, participants still smoking in their 70s were identified as current smokers, and former smokers were classified by the decade of life when quitting.

At the beginning of the study (2004-2005), the median age of participants was 75 years. Almost 56 per cent were former smokers and 6 per cent were current smokers.

Males were less likely (31 per cent vs 48 per cent of females) to be never-smokers. Males smoked more than females (18.2 pack years vs 11.6 pack years), and males were more likely to have started smoking before 15 years (19 per cent vs 9.5 per cent of female smokers).

During an average follow-up of 6.4 years, almost 16 per cent of the participants died. While 12.1 per cent of the never smokers died, 16.2 per cent, 19.7 per cent, 23.9 per cent and 27.9 per cent of former smokers who quit between ages 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, and 60-69 years died, respectively.

Current smokers fared the worst, with 33.1 per cent dying. Mortality rates for women were lower than men at each level of smoking use.

"These data show that age at smoking initiation and cessation, both key components of smoking duration, are important predictors of mortality in US adults aged 70 years and older," said Sarah H. Nash, from NIH. The study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

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Agencies
February 10,2020

Washington D.C, Feb 10: Children's vulnerability towards depression, anxiety, impulsive behaviour, and poor cognitive performance could be determined by considering the hours of sleep they manage to get.

Sleep states are active processes that support the reorganisation of brain circuitry. This makes sleep especially important for children, whose brains are developing and reorganising rapidly.

In a study by researchers from the University of Warwick -- recently published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry -- cases of 11,000 children aged between 9 and 11 years from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development dataset were analyzed to find out the relationship between sleep duration and brain structure.

The study was carried out by researchers Professor Jianfeng Feng, Professor Edmund Rolls, Dr. Wei Cheng and colleagues from the University of Warwick's Department of Computer Science and Fudan University.

Measures of depression, anxiety, impulsive behaviour and poor cognitive performance in the children were associated with shorter sleep duration. Moreover, the depressive problems were associated with short sleep duration one year later.

The reduced brain volume of areas such as orbitofrontal cortex, prefrontal, and temporal cortex, precuneus, and supramarginal gyrus was found to be associated with the shorter sleep duration.

Professor Jianfeng Feng, from the University of Warwick's Department of Computer Science, comments: "The recommended amount of sleep for children 6 to 12 years of age is 9-12 hours. However, sleep disturbances are common among children and adolescents around the world due to the increasing demand on their time from school, increased screen time use, and sports and social activities."

A previous study showed that about 60 per cent of adolescents in the United States receive less than eight hours of sleep on school nights.

Professor Jianfeng Feng further added: "Our findings showed that the total score for behavior problems in children with less than 7 hours sleep was 53 per cent higher on average and the cognitive total score was 7.8 per cent lower on average than for children with 9-11 hours of sleep. It highlights the importance of enough sleep in both cognition and mental health in children."

Professor Edmund Rolls from the University of Warwick's Department of Computer Science also commented: "These are important associations that have been identified between sleep duration in children, brain structure, and cognitive and mental health measures, but further research is needed to discover the underlying reasons for these relationships."

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Agencies
May 25,2020

Singapore, May 25: COVID-19 patients are no longer infectious after 11 days of getting sick even though some may still test positive, according to a new study by infectious disease experts in Singapore.

A positive test "does not equate to infectiousness or viable virus," a joint research paper by Singapore's National Centre for Infectious Diseases and the Academy of Medicine, Singapore said. The virus "could not be isolated or cultured after day 11 of illness."

The paper was based on a study of 73 patents in the city-state.

The latest findings may have implications on the country's patient discharge policy. The discharge criteria is currently based on negative test results rather than infectiousness.

Singapore's strategy on managing COVID-19 patients is guided by the latest local and international clinical scientific evidence, and the Ministry of Health will evaluate if the latest evidence can be incorporated into its patient clinical management plan, according to a report by the Straits Times.

So far, 13,882, or about 45% of the total 31,068 Covid-19 patients in Singapore have been discharged from hospitals and community facilities. Singapore reported 642 new Covid-19 cases as of noon on Saturday.

The government has been actively screening pre-school staff as it prepares to reopen pre-schools from June 2. On Friday, two pre-school employees tested positive for the novel coronavirus, bringing the total number of confirmed cases among pre-school staff to seven, according to the Ministry of Health.

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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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