Health bulletin

Sleeping less than five hours a night may be deadly

People who do not get enough sleep are more than twice as likely to die of heart disease, according to a large British study.

Although the reasons are unclear, researchers said lack of sleep appeared to be linked to increased blood pressure, which raises the risk of heart attacks and stroke.

A 17-year analysis of 10,000 government workers showed those who cut their sleep from seven hours a night to five or less faced a 1.7-fold increased risk of death from all causes and more than double the risk of cardiovascular death.

The findings highlight a danger in busy modern lifestyles, said Francesco Cappuccio, professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Warwick's medical school.

"The current pressures in society to cut out sleep, in order to squeeze in more, may not be a good idea -- particularly if you go below five hours," he said.

Group will study genes' link to drugs

An effort that joins major drugmakers, regulators and academics was launched Thursday to study the genetics of people who develop serious side effects from prescription drugs.

The information may help doctors determine which people are at risk for complications before prescribing a drug, another step toward "personalized medicine."

It also may allow drug companies to produce new medicines that in the past would be scrapped because of problems in a small number of patients. The drugs might still be able to be used if genetic tests could identify in advance who might develop bad reactions.

Called the International Serious Adverse Events Consortium, the nonprofit effort is funded by millions of dollars from seven drugmakers.

Initial work will focus on drug-induced liver injury and a rare skin reaction called Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, which causes a life-threatening rash and blisters.

Genes raise asthma risk for blacks

Blacks in the United States are more likely than whites to need urgent care for asthma, for reasons that may be genetic, researchers reported.

The report from the University of California, San Francisco, covered 678 patients who had hospital treatment for asthma between 2000 and 2004 and were checked over a follow-up period to see if they returned to the hospital.

More than 35 percent of the blacks sought emergency room help later on, compared with 21 percent of whites, the study found, and more than 26 percent of blacks -- compared with a little more than 15 percent of whites -- were admitted to the hospital.

The authors, writing in the Archives of Internal Medicine, said differences in therapy could not explain the discrepancy, nor could socioeconomic status or the severity of the asthma.

"These findings suggest that genetic differences may underlie these racial disparities," the study concluded. "Further investigation of genetic differences and gene-environment interactions in black populations is needed to better understand the reasons."

Three drinks a day ups cancer risk

Three or more drinks a day, whether beer, wine or spirits, boost a woman's risk of breast cancer as much as smoking a pack of cigarettes, U.S. researchers said.

The relationship between alcohol and breast cancer is known, but there has been little data on whether the choice of drink made a difference, they told a European Cancer Conference.

In one of the largest studies to investigate links between breast cancer and alcohol, researchers found that alcohol itself and the amount a person consumed were key rather than the type of drink.

Women who drank between one and two alcoholic drinks per day increased their risk of breast cancer by 10 percent compared with people who consumed less than one drink each day, the study found. The risk of breast cancer jumped by 30 percent in women who drank more than three drinks a day.

Herceptin kills aggressive tumors

Adding Herceptin to chemotherapy before surgery eradicates tumors in nearly three times as many women with inflammatory breast cancer as chemotherapy alone, the drug's maker Roche Holding AG said. The results were from a clinical trial in women with inflammatory HER2-positive breast cancer, a rare but aggressive form of the disease, presented at the European Cancer Conference in Barcelona.

Study links heart disease, cancer

Patients showing signs of heart disease are at nearly double the risk of also having colon cancer, perhaps because unhealthy habits and inflammation are at the root of both, researchers said.

The association between heart disease, the single leading cause of death in industrialized countries, and the second most common type of cancer was confirmed in a study of more than 600 patients evaluated at the University of Hong Kong.

The two illnesses share several risk factors: smoking, high-fat diet, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and sedentary lifestyle.

Susan Stevens