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Recent Longevity News:
Cholesterol Control, New Fed Recommendations Increase Diet and Drug Interventions - ABC News, 5/15/01 - "Three times as many Americans should be taking cholesterol-lowering drugs under new aggressive guidelines to treat patients at high risk for heart disease" - Note: Red yeast rice is a non-prescription statin
Hormones may cut risk for breast cancer patients - USA Today, 5/15/01 - "Hormone replacement therapy after a diagnosis of breast cancer does not increase the risk of recurrence of the disease and may even lower chances that the cancer will return"
Alzheimer's Disease May Be Linked to Deficiencies in Vitamin B12 or Folate - Doctor's Guide, 5/8/01 - "Study authors theorized that vitamin B12 or folate deficiencies affect Alzheimer's disease by influencing neurotransmitters or the levels of the amino acid homocysteine in the body. Either vitamin B12 or folate deficiency can increase homocysteine levels. Homocysteine has a neurotoxic effect that could lead to cell death or neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's disease"
Elderly Lack Adequate Levels of Vitamin D - Medscape, 5/8/01, user=benhess, pwd=asdfgh - "Despite the fact that most of patients were daily receiving multivitamins containing 400-800 IU of vitamin D, investigators found that the majority had low levels of the nutrient ... Vitamin D increases calcium absorption by 30% to 80% and is therefore crucial in order to maintain strong bones"
The Nun Study - Time Magazine cover story on Alzheimer's, 5/14/01 - "the sisters who had expressed the most positive emotions in their writing as girls ended up living longest, and that those on the road to Alzheimer's expressed fewer and fewer positive emotions as their mental functions declined"
Majority of Migraine Patients Not Satisfied with Treatment - Doctor's Guide, 5/10/01- "only 10 percent of migraine patients who consult a doctor are prescribed a triptan, the newest class of medication developed specifically for the treatment of migraine" - This is a good reason to do your own research. - Ben
Melatonin Prevents Oxidative Stress From Iron And Erythropoietin Use - Medscape, 5/14/01, user=benhess, pwd=asdfgh - "iron and erythropoietin administration worsened the already high oxidative stress profile in chronic renal failure patients. However, pretreatment with oral melatonin prevented these changes and appeared to have no adverse side effects ... Because oxidative stress is a pathogenic factor contributing to the increased cardiovascular risk profile in chronic hemodialysis patients, it is important to define strategies that would restore the oxidant-antioxidant imbalance in uremia"
Pretreatment With Statins Improves Clinical Outcome After Stroke - Medscape, 5/14/01, user=benhess, pwd=asdfgh - "Treatment with statins before the onset of stroke may not only reduce the risk of death, as has been demonstrated in multiple studies, but appears to also improve the overall clinical outcome"
Lifetime Cholesterol Levels Not Predictive of Alzheimer's Disease Risk - Medscape, 5/14/01, user=benhess, pwd=asdfgh - "Statin drugs probably have another mechanism of action other than cholesterol-lowering to account for the observed effect of reducing the risk of Alzheimer's disease" - Note: Red yeast rice is a non-prescription statin
Boning Up On Bone Health - ABC News, 5/14/01 - "It is never too early to start protecting bones from osteoporosis with exercise and better posture. What should you know about osteoporosis?"
Colon cancer drug may shrink tumors, extend lives - CNN, 5/14/01 - "In a study of 121 patients with end-stage colon cancer that didn't respond to chemotherapy, one out of five saw their tumors treated with C225 shrink by 50 percent or more ... C225, delivered intravenously, works by limiting a cancer cell's access to growth factor, which many cells need to survive. That makes the cancer cells weaker, and therefore more vulnerable to chemotherapy"
NIH Calls For More Aggressive Treatment Of High Cholesterol - Intelihealth, 5/15/01 - "The new guidelines remain the same for total cholesterol [200], but add that 100 mg of LDL is optimal for that form. They also add a listing of 130-159 mg of LDL as borderline high, 160 mg as high, 190 mg as very high. The too low reading for the good HDL is raised from 35 mg to 40 mg."
Chelation or Not? Study Claims Chelation Has No Benefits - ABC News, 5/15/01 - "After almost a year of study researchers found no differences between the two groups in heart function or quality of life"
Study disputes value of mistletoe for cancer - CNN, 5/14/01 - "Skin cancer metastasized to the brain in 19 percent of the patients who took mistletoe, but in only 7 percent of the patients who didn't take it"
Donepezil and Rivastigmine May Be Combined In Alzheimer's Patients - Doctor's Guide, 5/12/01
Donepezil Better Tolerated Than Rivastigmine, Efficacy Comparable - Doctor's Guide, 5/11/01 - "both drugs to provide effective cognitive improvement in patients with Alzheimer’s dementia, but donepezil to have fewer cholinergic side effects"
Fading Memories: Is It Alzheimer's? Experts List 10 Warning Signs of the Disease - WebMD, 5/9/01
Cholesterol drug may prevent Alzheimer's - CNN, 5/1/01 - "What we found was that patients taking statins have a 60 to 70 percent reduction in the risk of Alzheimer's disease"
Decreased Memory After Age 60 Linked To High Homocysteine Levels - Doctor's Guide, 4/26/01 - "High circulating levels of homocysteine, especially with increasing age, have been associated with cognitive impairment. In recent studies, Alzheimer disease and dementia after multiple strokes have been linked to extremely high serum homocysteine concentrations ... The folate status of the participants was an important consideration because folate has been shown to significantly modify homocysteine levels"
Today's Topic: More on statins:
Cholesterol drug may prevent Alzheimer's - CNN, 5/1/01 - "What we found was that patients taking statins have a 60 to 70 percent reduction in the risk of Alzheimer's disease"
Multi-Purpose Medicine, One Drug Type May Knock Out Many Diseases - ABC News, 2/1/01 - "A class of drugs called statins have been around for a while, battling bad cholesterol. But now studies are showing they have a chameleon-like quality that makes them useful in fighting other diseases, from Alzheimer’s to osteoporosis."
Statin Drugs Lower Marker of Inflammation - Medscape, 3/23/01, user=benhess, pwd=asdfgh - "treatment with pravastatin (Pravachol, Bristol Myers Squibb) or simvastatin (Zocor, Merck) not only effectively lower cholesterol, they also reduce levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of inflammation that is linked to risk of cardiovascular disease"
Inflammation appears to do a number on human heart - CNN, 11/13/00 - "For now, though, doctors at Mount Sinai Medical Center said they were fairly certain that one cause of inflammation is high cholesterol -- and that cholesterol-fighting drugs called 'statins' tend to help."
Additional Statins Show Anti-Inflammatory Effect - Medscape, 4/18/01, user=benhess, pwd=asdfgh - ""Patients are at high risk for heart disease when C-reactive protein levels are over 2 mg/L and at low risk when the levels are less than 1.1 mg/L, he noted. "With most of the patients in our study, whose baseline median C-reactive protein was 2.6 mg/L, we could reduce their levels of C-reactive protein to 1.7 mg/L with pravastatin or simvastatin and to 1.9 mg/L with atorvastatin," ... "With time, C-reactive protein may be considered a [heart disease] risk factor itself," he suggested. "So it is very heartening for patients that statins not only reduce low-density lipoprotein levels, but also reduce C-reactive protein levels.""
Statins are magic when you gotta have heart - U.S. News & World Report, 4/16/01 - "Roughly half the cholesterol that circulates in the blood is generated by the liver, and the drugs employ a natural or synthetic form of a substance derived from a fungus to block an enzyme the liver needs to produce cholesterol"
Hit 'em Hard and Fast: Statins Early After Heart Attack Improve Outcomes, Save Lives, Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs Work Even if Cholesterol Is Normal - WebMD, 4/3/01 - "When given to patients with mild heart attacks, the powerful cholesterol-lowering pill Lipitor not only lowered their risk of dying from their disease, but also significantly reduced the risk of future heart attacks and strokes"
