Even moderate smoking associated with sudden death risk in women

American Heart Association rapid access journal report

2012-12-12

(Press-News.org) Women who are even light-to-moderate cigarette smokers may be significantly more likely than nonsmokers to suffer sudden cardiac death, according to new research in Circulation: Arrhythmia & Electrophysiology, an American Heart Association journal. The findings indicate long-term smokers may be at even greater risk. But quitting smoking can reduce and eliminate the risk over time. "Cigarette smoking is a known risk factor for sudden cardiac death, but until now, we didn't know how the quantity and duration of smoking effected the risk among apparently healthy women, nor did we have long-term follow-up," said Roopinder K. Sandhu, M.D., M.P.H., the study's lead author and a cardiac electrophysiologist at the University of Alberta's Mazankowski Heart Institute in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Researchers examined the incidence of sudden cardiac death among more than 101,000 healthy women in the Nurses' Health Study, which has collected biannual health questionnaires from female nurses nationwide since 1976. They included records dating back to 1980 with 30 years of follow-up. Most of the participants were white, and all were between 30 to 55 years old at the study's start. On average, those who smoked reported that they started in their late teens. During the study, 351 participants died of sudden cardiac death. Other findings include: Light-to-moderate smokers, defined in this study as those who smoked one to 14 cigarettes daily, had nearly two times the risk of sudden cardiac death as their nonsmoking counterparts. Women with no history of heart disease, cancer, or stroke who smoked had almost two and a half times the risk of sudden cardiac death compared with healthy women who never smoked. For every five years of continued smoking, the risk climbed by 8 percent. Among women with heart disease, the risk of sudden cardiac death dropped to that of a nonsmoker within 15 to 20 years after smoking cessation. In the absence of heart disease, there was an immediate reduction in sudden cardiac death risk, occurring in fewer than five years.

Sudden cardiac death results from the abrupt loss of heart function, usually within minutes after the heart stops. It's a primary cause of heart-related deaths, accounting for between 300,000-400,000 deaths in the United States each year. "Sudden cardiac death is often the first sign of heart disease among women, so lifestyle changes that reduce that risk are particularly important," said Sandhu, who is also a visiting scientist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Mass. "Our study shows that cigarette smoking is an important modifiable risk factor for sudden cardiac death among all women. Quitting smoking before heart disease develops is critical." ### Co-authors are Monik C. Jimenez, Sc.D.; Stephanie E. Chiuve, Sc.D.; Kathryn C. Fitzgerald, M.Sc.; Stacey A. Kenfield, Sc.D.; Usha B. Tedrow, M.D.; and Christine M. Albert, M.D., M.P.H. Author disclosures are on the manuscript. The National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association funded the study. Learn more from the American Heart Association on the benefits of not smoking and how to quit smoking. Learn more about the unique heart disease risks women face and how to beat them at www.GoRedForWomen.org. For the latest heart news, follow us on Twitter: #Heart News. Statements and conclusions of study authors published in American Heart Association scientific journals 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 www.heart.org/corporatefunding.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Concussions affect children's brains even after symptoms subside

2012-12-12

Washington, DC — Brain changes in children who have sustained a mild traumatic brain injury, or concussion, persist for months following injury — even after the symptoms of the injury are gone, according to a study published in the December 12 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings highlight the potential benefit of using advanced imaging techniques to monitor recovery in children following concussions. Despite growing concerns over the risk of concussions in youth, the majority of research examining their effects on the brain has involved adults. These ...

Manipulative therapies may be a beneficial treatment for infantile colic

2012-12-12

A Cochrane review of studies into manipulative therapies for colic, by the University of Southampton, suggests that the treatment technique may be of some benefit. Infantile colic is a distressing problem, characterised by excessive crying of infants and it is the most common complaint seen by physicians in the first 16 weeks of a child's life. It is usually considered a benign disorder because the symptoms generally disappear by the age of five or six months. However, the degree of distress caused to parents and family life is such that physicians often feel the ...

Discovery of tiny fossil new to science

2012-12-12

'It is exciting to discover that a common group of fossils that we thought we knew a lot about may well have been hood-winking us as to their true identity, which we now realise because we have their beautifully fossilised soft-parts. A case of a 'wolf in sheep's clothing''- Professor David Siveter, University of Leicester An international team of researchers have made an extremely rare discovery of a species of animal - related to crabs, lobsters and shrimps – that is new to science. Scientists from the universities of Leicester, Oxford, Imperial and Yale have announced ...

Was the sauropod dinosaurs' large size due to plant food? Scientists argue old idea still has legs

2012-12-12

The long necked sauropod dinosaurs were the largest land animals ever to walk the Earth – but why were they so large? A decade ago a team of plant ecologists from South Africa suggested that this was due to the nature of the plant food they ate, however these ideas have fallen out of favour with many dinosaur researchers. Now Liverpool John Moores University's (LJMU's) Dr David Wilkinson and Professor Graeme Ruxton of University of St Andrews, Scotland, argue that this idea still has legs. The results have been published in the journal Functional Ecology published by ...

UAlberta medical researchers make key discovery in fight against Alzheimer's disease

2012-12-12

Medical researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered a drug intended for diabetes appears to restore memory in Alzheimer's brain cells. Jack Jhamandas, a researcher with the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the U of A, is the principal investigator with the team whose research results were recently published in the peer-reviewed publication The Journal of Neuroscience. He works in the Division of Neurology. The team took brain tissue from animal models with Alzheimer's disease and tested the tissue in the lab, looking specifically at the cells' memory ...

Grains gang up to bear brunt of missile and meteorite impacts

2012-12-12

DURHAM, N.C. -- High-speed video of projectiles slamming into a bed of disks has given scientists a new microscopic picture of the way a meteorite or missile transfers the energy of its impact to sand and dirt grains. The transfer is jerky, not smooth. "It was surprising just how unsmooth the slow-down of the intruding object was," Duke physicist Robert Behringer said. His team describes their new videos and impact analysis in the Dec. 7 Physical Review Letters. The research may change the way scientists model meteorite and missile impacts and their effects. Scientists ...

New research helps predict susceptibility to Burkitt lymphoma

2012-12-12

WASHINGTON (Dec. 11, 2012) – New research, presented this morning at the 54th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), has identified important associations between Plasmodium falciparum (Pf) malaria and endemic Burkitt Lymphoma (eBL) that may help researchers identify young children who are more susceptible to eBL. Unlike previous studies in which malaria infection alone was considered the important factor, this study approached the evolving complexity and heterogeneity of the humoral immune response to Pf as a key component for risk of developing ...

Ancient red dye powers new 'green' battery

2012-12-12

Rose madder – a natural plant dye once prized throughout the Old World to make fiery red textiles – has found a second life as the basis for a new "green" battery. Chemists from The City College of New York teamed with researchers from Rice University and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory to develop a non-toxic and sustainable lithium-ion battery powered by purpurin, a dye extracted from the roots of the madder plant (Rubia species). More than 3500 years ago, civilizations in Asia and the Middle East first boiled madder roots to color fabrics in vivid oranges, reds ...

Kentucky team inhibits Alzheimer's biomarkers in animal model by targeting astrocytes

2012-12-12

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 10, 2012) — A research team composed of University of Kentucky researchers has published a paper which provides the first direct evidence that activated astrocytes could play a harmful role in Alzheimer's disease. The UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging has also received significant new National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to further this line of study. Chris Norris, an associate professor in the UK College of Medicine Department of Molecular and Biomedical Pharmacology, as well as a member of the faculty at the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, ...

What causes hot flushes during menopause?

2012-12-12

Hot flushes affect millions of people, and not just women. Yet, it is still unclear what causes the episodes of temperature discomfort, often accompanied by profuse sweating. Now a team of researchers around Dr. Naomi Rance, a professor in the department of pathology at the UA College of Medicine, has come closer to understanding the mechanism of hot flushes, a necessary step for potential treatment options down the road. This research was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team identified a group of brain cells known as KNDy ...

Even moderate smoking associated with sudden death risk in women

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: