Health Bulletin
Anxious people have higher heart risk, too
Angry, hostile people aren't the only ones with a higher heart attack risk. U.S. researchers found men who scored the highest on tests of anxiety were 30 to 40 percent more likely than the others to have a heart attack.
The findings held even when standard heart risks such as diet and smoking were factored in, psychologist Biing-Jiun Shen and colleagues at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles reported.
"What we're seeing is over and beyond what can be explained by blood pressure, obesity, cholesterol, age, cigarette smoking, blood sugar levels and other cardiovascular risk factors," Shen said in a statement.
Shen and colleagues said they analyzed data from a study of 735 men. They took psychological tests in 1986, when they were still in good health, and then followed for 12 years.
Those who scored in the top 15 percentile for anxiety were more likely to suffer heart attacks later, the researchers found.
Dementia diagnosis shortens life
People with dementia survive an average four-and-a-half years after diagnosis, researchers said in a study they hope might help care-givers plan for patients with Alzheimer's and other, similar illnesses.
Researchers know dementia raises the risk of dying early but the study is the first to estimate how long people are likely to survive with the condition, said Carol Brayne, a researcher at the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge.
Sugar-free gum a pain in the gut
Consuming too much sorbitol, a sweetener widely used in "sugar-free" chewing gum and sweets, can cause serious bowel problems, German doctors said.
The warning follows the cases of two patients who suffered chronic diarrhea, abdominal pain and severe weight loss after ingesting large amounts of sorbitol.
Several genes affect cancer risk
The risk of breast cancer among women carrying the well-known BRCA mutations is also affected by other genes, researchers said Tuesday.
The study of close relatives of breast cancer patients who had one of the BRCA mutations showed the risk of the disease varied greatly between families, indicating that other genes must be involved.
So a woman who knows she has a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation still cannot know precisely what her risk of breast cancer is, the researchers reported.
New meningitis shot for infants
A new type of meningitis vaccine boosted the immunity of infants as young as six months, offering a potential new weapon against this deadly disease, British and Canadian researchers said.
The vaccine, made by Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG, is aimed at four of the most common strains of meningococcal meningitis, a potentially fatal bacterial disease involving inflammation of membranes around the brain and spinal cord. It primarily affects babies, particularly those aged 3 to 12 months.
An older vaccine currently licensed in the United States offers poor protection for infants, who are most at risk, according to Matthew Snape of Britain's University of Oxford.
"This vaccine offers the hope that the number of young children experiencing this devastating illness can be dramatically reduced," Snape said in an e-mail.
In research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Snape and colleagues studied the safety and effectiveness of the new vaccine, called MenACWY, in 421 healthy infants in Britain and Canada.