(Press-News.org) CLEVELAND, Ohio (May 26, 2021)--Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), which causes tingling and numbness in the hand, more commonly affects women than men and tends to peak around the age of menopause. A new study suggests the risk of severe CTS increases in women who underwent bilateral oophorectomy before menopause, and estrogen therapy didn't provide a protective effect. Study results are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS).
Carpal tunnel syndrome is the most common nerve disorder in the upper body. Although predominately idiopathic in nature, an association with sex hormones has been suggested because of a higher incidence in women compared with men at all ages. The peak frequency for women is around the age of menopause, which is 50 to 59 years, but for men the peak is 70 to 79 years. In addition, estrogen therapy has been shown in other clinical trials to reduce the risk of CTS in postmenopausal women.
In this study, 1,653 premenopausal women who underwent bilateral oophorectomy between 1988 and 2007 were compared with a sample of 1,653 age-matched women who did not undergo the same surgery. Both groups were assessed for CTS in subsequent years using diagnostic codes.
This study is one of the first to demonstrate an increased long-term risk of de novo severe CTS in women who underwent bilateral oophorectomy before menopause. The risk was greater in women with lower body mass index, women who had never given birth to a child or carried a pregnancy, and in those with a benign ovarian indication for oophorectomy. The study did not find a protective effect of estrogen therapy after the surgery.
It remains unclear whether oophorectomy increases the risk of CTS because it causes abrupt estrogen deficiency because of another endocrine disruption or because of some confounding mechanism such as shared risk factors or a lower threshold to pain.
Results are published in the article "Risk of de novo severe carpal tunnel syndrome after bilateral oophorectomy: a population-based cohort study."
"This study highlights yet another risk associated with bilateral oophorectomy before natural menopause. Together, the findings of this study and others showing increased risk for disease outcomes, such as heart disease and dementia, should prompt reassessment of bilateral oophorectomy before menopause in women who are not at high risk for ovarian cancer," says Dr. Stephanie Faubion, NAMS medical director.
INFORMATION:
For more information about menopause and healthy aging, visit http://www.menopause.org.
Founded in 1989, The North American Menopause Society (NAMS) is North America's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the health and quality of life of all women during midlife and beyond through an understanding of menopause and healthy aging. Its multidisciplinary membership of 2,000 leaders in the field--including clinical and basic science experts from medicine, nursing, sociology, psychology, nutrition, anthropology, epidemiology, pharmacy, and education--makes NAMS uniquely qualified to serve as the definitive resource for health professionals and the public for accurate, unbiased information about menopause and healthy aging. To learn more about NAMS, visit http://www.menopause.org.
Oncotarget published "Creation of a new class of radiosensitizers for glioblastoma based on the mibefradil pharmacophore" which reported that this group previously identified a calcium channel blocker, mibefradil, as a potential GBM radiosensitizer. They discovered that mibefradil selectively inhibits a key DNA repair pathway, alternative non-homologous end joining.
Then, they initiated a phase I clinical trial that revealed promising initial efficacy of mibefradil, but further development was hampered by dose-limiting toxicities, including CCB-related cardiotoxicity, off-target hERG channel and cytochrome P450 enzymes interactions.
Here, the authors show that mibefradil inhibits ...
Even among a large group of cancer survivors who were mostly insured, college educated and had annual incomes above the national average, up to 10% delayed care in the previous 12 months because they simply could not afford out of pocket expenses like copays and deductibles, investigators report.
Being unable to get time off from work and being "nervous" about seeing a health care provider, were among the other frequently cited reasons for not always getting timely survivorship care, investigators at the Medical College of Georgia and Georgia Cancer Center report in the journal Cancer Medicine.
Investigators analyzed data from 5,426 cancer survivors who volunteered to share their information with the National Institutes of Health's All of Us Research Program, a historic effort ...
The pandemic has increased older adults' willingness to receive the flu shot, new research shows.
The study analyzed survey results of 4,501 Canadians over the age of 50 from ten provinces.
Twenty per cent of 1,001 research participants aged 50 to 64 indicated they had not considered getting a flu shot, but were now more likely to given the impact of COVID-19. Of these respondents, 92 per cent inducated that they had not been vaccinated against influenza the year before.
Of the 3,500 participants aged 65 and older, eight per cent reported that they had not originally planned to get a flu shot but were now more likely to receive it.
"The pandemic has been ...
A hidden planetary crisis has long been neglected that is as serious as the disappearance of species and degradation of habitats. Genetic diversity, which reflects the variation in DNA within species and populations and is the key to their capacity to adapt in times of change, is being lost at an alarming rate. According to an article by 28 authors representing 16 countries, the loss of genetic diversity can affect resiliency in the face of environmental change and result in the loss of important services provided to society. Once gone, genetic diversity can take millennia to return. ...
A new study by Cardiff University in collaboration with the University of Hertfordshire has revealed the huge "secondary burden" placed on those closest to people living with Long Covid.
The researchers surveyed more than 700 Covid-19 survivors along with their partners and close relatives to understand for the first time the impact of the disease on families as a whole.
The findings, published today in BMJ Open, suggest family quality of life is being "severely affected" and a major system of support is needed for both survivors - and those closest to them.
Survivors and their families spoke ...
Clots in the arteries (arterial thrombosis) are the most common cause of stroke (ischaemic stroke) and have been reported in detail for the first time in young adults who received the Oxford-AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine in a letter from UK stroke specialists published online in Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.
While rare cases of blood clots have been reported previously after administration of the Oxford-AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine, these have affected veins and most specifically veins in the brain (cerebral venous sinuses).
People who have experienced this unusual form of stroke (cerebral venous sinus thrombosis) have also had low platelet ...
Up to a third of patients taking methotrexate - a common treatment for immune mediated inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis/psoriatic arthritis - failed to achieve an adequate immune response to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in a small study accepted for publication in the journal Annals of Rheumatic Diseases.
While mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been shown to produce an effective immune response in over 90% of healthy adults in clinical trials, it is unknown whether the immune response is as robust in patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMID) who may also be taking immunomodulatory medications.
The authors assessed the immune response to the mRNA Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in 82 patients ...
First-born children have a lower risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes than brothers and sisters born later, but people who are part of a large family with many siblings have an increased risk of these events, suggests the results of a large population study in Sweden, published in the online journal BMJ Open.
It is well-known that family history - the health of parents and grandparents - has an impact on a person's health, including their risk of cardiovascular events, but now there is growing interest in what influence the make-up of a person's immediate family - the number and age of siblings - might have.
The authors accessed data on 1.36 million men and 1.32 million women born between 1932 and 1960 and aged 30-58 years in ...
While some studies suggest female patients treated by female physicians have better outcomes, there does not appear to be a relationship between operator and patient gender and outcome in patients undergoing coronary angioplasty or stenting. These are the results of a first-of-its-kind study by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Cardiovascular Consortium (BMC2) and published in Catheterizations and Cardiovascular Interventions.
The study looked at procedures performed by 385 male interventional cardiologists, and 18 female interventional cardiologists at 48 non-federal hospitals across the state of Michigan. Female interventional cardiologists continue to be markedly under-represented and only perform a small percentage of cases, with women accounting for ...
Army ants form some of the largest insect societies on the planet. They are quite famous in popular culture, most notably from a terrifying scene in Indiana Jones. But they are also ecologically important. They live in very large colonies and consume large amounts of arthropods. And because they eat so much of the other animals around them, they are nomadic and must keep moving in order to not run out of food. Due to their nomadic nature and mass consumption of food, they have a huge impact on arthropod populations throughout tropical rainforests floors.
Their mass raids are considered the pinnacle of collective foraging behavior in the animal kingdom. The raids are a coordinated ...
