PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Getting fit in middle age can reduce heart failure risk

American Heart Association meeting report -- Abstract 156

2013-05-16
(Press-News.org) Middle aged and out of shape? It's not too late to get fit — and reduce your risk for heart failure, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions 2013. Researchers ranked fitness levels of 9,050 men and women (average age 48) who took two fitness tests — eight years apart — during mid-life. After 18 years of follow-up, they matched the fitness information to Medicare claims for heart failure hospitalizations. "People who weren't fit at the start of the study were at higher risk for heart failure after age 65," said Ambarish Pandey, M.D., lead author of the study and an internal medicine resident at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "However, those who improved their fitness reduced their heart failure risk, compared to those who continued to have a low fitness level eight years later." The researchers used metabolic equivalents (METs), a measure of how people do on a treadmill test. For each MET improvement in fitness, participants' heart failure risk dropped by 20 percent. For example, if a 40-year-old went from jogging 12 minutes per mile to running 10 minutes per mile — an increase of two METs — he or she reduced heart failure risk at a later age by 40 percent, Pandey said. As more people survive heart attacks and live with heart disease, the number with heart failure is increasing. More than 5.1 million Americans live with heart failure, according to the American Heart Association, and by 2030, the prevalence of heart failure may increase 25 percent from 2013 estimates. "Improving fitness is a good heart failure prevention strategy — along with controlling blood pressure and improving diet and lifestyle — that could be employed in mid-life to decrease the risk of heart failure in later years," Pandey said. ### Co-authors are Benjamin Willis, M.D., M.P.H.; David Leonard, Ph.D.; Laura DeFina, M.D.; Ang Gao, M.S.; and Jarett Berry, M.D. The American Heart Association funded the study. Additional disclosures are on the abstract. Follow news from the Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions 2013 via Twitter: @HeartNews; #QCOR13. Statements and conclusions of study authors presented at American Heart Association scientific meetings are solely those of the study authors and do not necessarily reflect the association's policy or position. The association makes no representation or guarantee as to their accuracy or reliability. The association receives funding primarily from individuals; foundations and corporations (including pharmaceutical, device manufacturers and other companies) also make donations and fund specific association programs and events. The association has strict policies to prevent these relationships from influencing the science content. Revenues from pharmaceutical and device corporations are available at http://www.heart.org/corporatefunding.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Young women often less healthy than young men before heart attacks

2013-05-16
Young women tend to be less healthy and have a poorer quality of life than similar-aged men before suffering a heart attack, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions 2013. "Compared with young men, women under 55 years are less likely to have heart attacks. But, when they do occur, women are more likely to have medical problems, poorer physical and mental functioning, more chest pain and a poorer quality of life in the month leading up to their heart attack," said Rachel Dreyer, Ph.D., ...

H1N1 discovered in marine mammals

2013-05-16
Scientists at the University of California, Davis, detected the H1N1 (2009) virus in free-ranging northern elephant seals off the central California coast a year after the human pandemic began, according to a study published today, May 15, in the journal PLOS ONE. It is the first report of that flu strain in any marine mammal. "We thought we might find influenza viruses, which have been found before in marine mammals, but we did not expect to find pandemic H1N1," said lead author Tracey Goldstein, an associate professor with the UC Davis One Health Institute and ...

Catching graphene butterflies

2013-05-16
Writing in Nature, a large international team led Dr Roman Gorbachev from The University of Manchester shows that, when graphene placed on top of insulating boron nitride, or 'white graphene', the electronic properties of graphene change dramatically revealing a pattern resembling a butterfly. The pattern is referred to as the elusive Hofstadter butterfly that has been known in theory for many decades but never before observed in experiments. Combining graphene with other materials in multiple-layered structures could lead to novel applications not yet explored by ...

Billion-year-old water could hold clues to life on Earth and Mars

2013-05-16
A UK-Canadian team of scientists has discovered ancient pockets of water, which have been isolated deep underground for billions of years and contain abundant chemicals known to support life. This water could be some of the oldest on the planet and may even contain life. Not just that, but the similarity between the rocks that trapped it and those on Mars raises the hope that comparable life-sustaining water could lie buried beneath the red planet's surface. The findings, published in Nature today, may force us to rethink which parts of our planet are fit for life, ...

Study reveals scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change

2013-05-16
A comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed articles on the topic of global warming and climate change has revealed an overwhelming consensus among scientists that recent warming is human-caused. The study is the most comprehensive yet and identified 4000 summaries, otherwise known as abstracts, from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming – 97 per cent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing man-made, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW) Led by John Cook at the University of Queensland, the study ...

Unlocking the manipulation of mosquitoes by malaria parasites

2013-05-16
Scientists will attempt to find out how malaria parasites manipulate their mosquito hosts after discovering that smell could be a major factor. In a study published in PLOS ONE today, a team of researchers led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine show for the first time that female mosquitoes infected with malaria parasites are significantly more attracted to human odour than uninfected mosquitoes. This was demonstrated in a laboratory setting in which infected female Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto mosquitoes were attracted to human odours three times ...

Repeat brain injury raises soldiers' suicide risk

2013-05-16
People in the military who suffer more than one mild traumatic brain injury face a significantly higher risk of suicide, according to research by the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Utah. A survey of 161 military personnel who were stationed in Iraq and evaluated for a possible traumatic brain injury – also known as TBI – showed that the risk for suicidal thoughts or behaviors increased not only in the short term, as measured during the past 12 months, but during the individual's lifetime. The risk of suicidal thoughts increased significantly ...

'Fish thermometer' reveals long-standing, global impact of climate change

2013-05-16
Climate change has been impacting global fisheries for the past four decades by driving species towards cooler, deeper waters, according to University of British Columbia scientists. In a Nature study published this week, UBC researchers used temperature preferences of fish and other marine species as a sort of "thermometer" to assess effects of climate change on the world's oceans between 1970 and 2006. They found that global fisheries catches were increasingly dominated by warm-water species as a result of fish migrating towards the poles in response to rising ocean ...

Sugar-sweetened beverages associated with increased kidney stone risk

2013-05-16
Boston – Twenty percent of American males and 10 percent of American females will experience a kidney stone at some point in their lifetime. Often, these patients will be advised to drink more fluids as a way to prevent future stone formation. Now, new research from Brigham and Women's Hospital finds that some beverages may be more helpful than others when it comes to preventing recurrent kidney stones. In a study published online May 15, 2013 in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN), researchers report that the consumption of sugar sweetened ...

First direct proof of Hofstadter butterfly fractal observed in moiré superlattices

2013-05-16
New York, NY—May 15, 2013—A team of researchers from Columbia University, City University of New York, the University of Central Florida (UCF), and Tohoku University and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan, have directly observed a rare quantum effect that produces a repeating butterfly-shaped energy spectrum, confirming the longstanding prediction of this quantum fractal energy structure, called Hofstadter's butterfly. The study, which focused on moiré-patterned graphene, is published in the May 15, 2013, Advance Online Publication (AOP) of Nature. First ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Exercise as an anti-ageing intervention to avoid detrimental impact of mental fatigue

UMass Amherst Nursing Professor Emerita honored as ‘Living Legend’

New guidelines aim to improve cystic fibrosis screening

Picky eaters by day, buffet by night: Butterfly, moth diets sync to plant aromas

Pennington Biomedical’s Dr. Leanne Redman honored with the E. V. McCollum Award from the American Society for Nutrition

CCNY physicists uncover electronic interactions mediated via spin waves

Researchers’ 3D-printing formula may transform future of foam

Nurture more important than nature for robotic hand

Drug-delivering aptamers target leukemia stem cells for one-two knockout punch

New study finds that over 95% of sponsored influencer posts on Twitter were not disclosed

New sea grant report helps great lakes fish farmers navigate aquaculture regulations

Strain “trick” improves perovskite solar cells’ efficiency

How GPS helps older drivers stay on the roads

Estrogen and progesterone stimulate the body to make opioids

Dancing with the cells – how acoustically levitating a diamond led to a breakthrough in biotech automation

Machine learning helps construct an evolutionary timeline of bacteria

Cellular regulator of mRNA vaccine revealed... offering new therapeutic options

Animal behavioral diversity at risk in the face of declining biodiversity

Finding their way: GPS ignites independence in older adult drivers

Antibiotic resistance among key bacterial species plateaus over time

‘Some insects are declining but what’s happening to the other 99%?’

Powerful new software platform could reshape biomedical research by making data analysis more accessible

Revealing capillaries and cells in living organs with ultrasound

American College of Physicians awards $260,000 in grants to address equity challenges in obesity care

Researchers from MARE ULisboa discover that the European catfish, an invasive species in Portugal, has a prolonged breeding season, enhancing its invasive potential

Rakesh K. Jain, PhD, FAACR, honored with the 2025 AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research

Solar cells made of moon dust could power future space exploration

Deporting immigrants may further shrink the health care workforce

Border region emergency medical services in migrant emergency care

Resident physician intentions regarding unionization

[Press-News.org] Getting fit in middle age can reduce heart failure risk
American Heart Association meeting report -- Abstract 156