Sunday 2 June 2013

3 June, 2013

Prolonged painkiller use ups heart attack risk

A group of most commonly used drugs known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) can increase long-term users' heart-attack risk by more than a third, a study has shown.

In the study, the researchers analysed 639 random drug trials and assembled information on more than 350,000 patients, and found that for every 1,000
arthritis sufferers, the rate of people who suffered a "major vascular event" like heart attack, stroke or death increased from 8 per 1,000 to 11 per 1,000 with long-term, high-dose use of common NSAIDs, the Independent reported.

These drugs have also been linked to illnesses like
stomach ulcers.

A new generation of NSAID painkillers known as coxibs were introduced, which had a lesser risk of stomach pains, but they were widely linked to an increase in heart attacks, leading to public concern and withdrawal of the popular drug Vioxx from shelves in 2004.

The study's authors believe that high-dose treatments with older NSAIDs could be as big a risk factor for
heart attacks like Vioxx.

They said that all NSAIDs double the risk of heart-failure and produce a two- to four-times increased risk of gastrointestinal complications.

The study has been published in The Lancet medical journal.

03.06.2013



Children of long-lived parents disease free

Children of parents who live to a ripe old age are more likely to live longer, and are less prone to cancer and other common diseases associated with ageing, according to a new study.

Experts at the University of Exeter Medical School, led an international collaboration which discovered that people who had a long-lived mother or father were 24 percent less likely to get cancer.

The scientists compared the
children of long-lived parents to children whose parents survived to average ages for their generation.

The scientists classified long-lived
mothers as those who survived past 91 years old, and compared them to those who reached average age spans of 77 to 91. Long-lived fathers lived past 87 years old, compared with the average of 65 to 87 years. The scientists studied 938 new cases of cancer that developed during the 18 year follow-up period.

The researchers found that overall
mortality rates dropped by up to 19 per cent for each decade that at least one of the parents lived past the age of 65. For those whose mothers lived beyond 85, mortality rates were 40 per cent lower. The figure was a little lower (14 per cent) for fathers, possibly because of adverse lifestyle factors such as smoking, which may have been more common in the fathers.

The study has been published in the Journals of Gerontology: Series A.


03.06.2013









No comments:

Post a Comment