Infertile men at higher risk of
death: Study
Researchers
have said that men, who are infertile because of defects in their semen, appear
to be at higher death risk compared to men with normal semen. According to a
study led by a researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine, men
with two or more abnormalities in their semen were more than twice as likely to
die over a roughly eight-year period as men who had normal semen, the study
found.
In the new
study, Michael Eisenberg, MD, PhD, assistant professor of urology and
Stanford’s director of male reproductive medicine and surgery, and his
colleagues examined records of men ages 20 to 50 who had visited one of two
centers to be evaluated for possible infertility. In all, about 12,000 men
fitting this description were seen between 1994 and 2011 at Stanford Hospital
and Clinics or between 1989 and 2009 at the Baylor College of Medicine in
Houston. At both clinics, data were available for several aspects of a
patient’s semen quality, such as total semen volume and sperm counts, motility
and shape. (Dolores Lamb, PhD, and Larry Lipshultz, MD, of Baylor were senior
authors of the study.) By keying identifiers for the patients to data in the
National Death Index and the Social Security Death index, the investigators
were able to monitor these men’s mortality for a median of about eight years.
While no
single semen abnormality in itself predicted mortality, men with two or more
such abnormalities had more than double the risk of death over the eight-year
period following their initial fertility examination compared with those with
no semen abnormalities. The greater the number of abnormalities, the higher the
mortality rate, the study found. Of the 11,935 men who were followed, 69 died
during the follow-up period — a seemingly small number. This reflects, first
and foremost, the patients’ relative youth: Their median age was 36.6 years.
But it also reflects the fact that men who get evaluated for infertility tend
to have a higher-than-average socio-economic status and have accordingly better
diets, education and access to health care.
The new
study has been published online in the journal Human Reproduction.
Source: www.thehealthsite.com
20.05.2014
Study shows many smokers don’t know
about its dangers yet!
Researchers have found that many smokers still find accurate
and detailed facts about the dangers of tobacco both new and motivating in
terms of their desire to quit. One of the study’s authors James Thrasher,
associate professor at the University of South Carolina Arnold Schotol of
Public Health, said the tobacco industry systematically deceived the public for
decades, denying that smoking was dangerous or addictive.
Thrasher added that smokers indicate that receiving factual,
corrective information about the dangers of smoking motivates them to quit;
also that members of groups that are highly targeted by the tobacco industry
were especially responsive to the corrective statements. These groups include
women, African Americans, Latinos and lower-income people. ‘This study suggests
that the longer we wait to give smokers this information about the tobacco
industry’s lies, the more smokers will continue to consume tobacco’ noted
Thrasher.
1,404 smokers ranging in age from18 to 64 years old and of
diverse ethnic, gender and income groups were presented with the corrective
statements. Between one half and one third of the study participants stated
that some information in the corrective statements was novel to them. Those who
experienced novelty were likelier to express anger at the industry, to find the
message(s) relevant and to feel motivated to quit by the message(s). Novelty
ratings ran consistently higher among African Americans and Latinos than among
non-Hispanic whites.
Source: www.thehealthsite.com
20.05.2014
Being honest
may not get you a lot of friends but it will always get you the right ones
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