Recent Longevity News for the seven days ending 1/24/07.  You should consult your doctor if you are taking any medications.

An Old Cholesterol Remedy Is New Again - New York Times, 1/23/07 - "In its therapeutic form, nicotinic acid, niacin can increase HDL as much as 35 percent when taken in high doses, usually about 2,000 milligrams per day. It also lowers LDL, though not as sharply as statins do, and it has been shown to reduce serum levels of artery-clogging triglycerides as much as 50 percent ... There’s a great unfilled need for something that raises HDL ... Right now, in the wake of the failure of torcetrapib, niacin is really it. Nothing else available is that effective" - See niacin at Amazon.com.

Antidepressants May Increase Fracture Risk - WebMD, 1/22/07 - "Daily use of certain antidepressants doubles the risk of bone fractures in adults 50 and older ... Five SSRIs were used by study participants; besides Prozac and Paxil, they used Celexa, Luvox, and Zoloft"

Folic Acid Improves Cognitive Performance in Older Adults - Medscape, 1/19/07 - "Patients were randomized to either placebo or 800 µg daily of folic acid for 3 years ... 3 years of treatment with folic acid conferred on individuals resulted in the performance of someone 4.7 years younger for memory, 1.7 years younger for sensorimotor speed, 2.1 years younger for information processing speed, and 1.5 years younger for global cognitive function" - See iHerb folic acid products.

ARBs May Protect Against Diabetes Better Than ACE Inhibitors - Medscape, 1/19/07 - "Odds ratio of diabetes ... ARBs ... 0.57 ... ACE inhibitors ... 0.67 ... Calcium blockers ... 0.75 ... Placebo ... 0.77 ... Beta blockers ... 0.90 ... Diuretics (reference) ... 1.00"

Study Finds Differences between Blood Pressure Medicines and Newly-Diagnosed Diabetes - Doctor's Guide, 1/19/07 - "the lowest risk of new-onset diabetes occurred with ARBs or ACE-inhibitors, followed by calcium channel blockers or placebo (both of which were relatively neutral), and highest with beta-blockers or diuretics. They concluded that compared to inactive sugar-pills, diuretics or beta-blockers slightly increase the risk of becoming diabetic, whereas ARBs or ACE-inhibitors significantly decrease the risk"

A vitamin a day may do more harm than good - MSNBC, 1/19/07 - "Of 21 brands of multivitamins on the market in the United States and Canada selected by ConsumerLab.com and tested by independent laboratories, just 10 met the stated claims on their labels or satisfied other quality standards ... one product, The Vitamin Shoppe Multivitamins Especially for Women, was contaminated with lead ... You're safer choosing a well-known brand sold by some company or store that you have confidence in"

Chlorinated water exposure may boost cancer risk - Reuters, 1/18/07 - "The most prevalent chlorination by-products, chemicals called trihalomethanes (THM), can be absorbed into the body through the skin or by inhalation ... People living in households with an average household water THM level of more than 49 micrograms per liter had double the bladder cancer risk of those living in households where water THM concentration was below 8 micrograms per liter"

Cup Of Green Tea To Keep The Bacteria Away - Science Daily, 1/16/07 - "A cup of green tea contains up to 200 mg of catechins, whose biological activity has been mainly attributed to its antioxidant activity ... green tea catechins inhibit essential bacterial enzyme DNA gyrase, which is the target of several existing clinically used drugs"

Calcium May Reduce Colon Cancer Risk - WebMD, 1/16/07 - "Patients with a history of nonmalignant polyps took either 1,200 milligrams of calcium in supplement form or a placebo daily for four years ... Calcium use was associated with a 17% lower relative risk for polyp recurrence"

Which Drug for Initial Treatment of Type 2 Diabetes? - Medscape, 1/17/07 - "rosiglitazone was moderately more effective than the other two drugs in controlling fasting glucose levels during the first several years after diagnosis of type 2 diabetes"

Abstracts from this week's Doctor's Guide Nutrition/Dietetics:

Prolonged effect of calcium supplementation on risk of colorectal adenomas in a randomized trial - J Natl Cancer Inst. 2007 Jan 17;99(2):129-36 - "placebo or 1200 mg of elemental calcium daily for 4 years ... During the first 5 years after randomized treatment ended, subjects in the calcium group still had a substantially and statistically significantly lower risk of any adenoma than those in the placebo group (31.5% versus 43.2%"

Effects of rosiglitazone and metformin on inflammatory markers and adipokines: decrease in interleukin-18 is an independent factor for the improvement of homeostasis model assessment-beta in type 2 diabetes mellitus - Clin Endocrinol (Oxf). 2007 Feb;66(2):282-9 - "Rosiglitazone, but not metformin, improved the plasma concentrations of inflammatory markers and adipokines in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus"

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