Risk Factors

Men at an above-normal risk of prostate cancer may be able to reduce their risk of developing the disease by taking a drug already on the market. In research reported Wednesday, the drug dutasteride, currently used to shrink enlarged prostates, was found to reduce the risk of prostate cancer by about a quarter in high-risk men. The medication, sold under the brand name Avodart, apparently caused small tumors to stop growing or even to shrink, researchers...

After several years of upheaval over the best way to conduct breast cancer screening, researchers are working to find clarity over when women should begin getting mammograms, how often and at what cost. A pair of new studies clears up some of the uncertainty by finding that women who have a mother or sister diagnosed with breast cancer, or those who have unusually dense breast tissue, should have their first test at age 40 and repeat the exam at least once every other year. For these women, who face at least twice the average risk of developing breast cancer in their 40s, the benefits of routine screening between the ages of 40 and 49 outweigh the risk of false alarms and unnecessary work-ups that might otherwise put them at greater risk than doing nothing, researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Annals of Internal Medicine.

Add sepsis to your list of post-surgery worries. Or, if you're so inclined, to your list of worries in general. First, we'll look at the hospital picture. Researchers at Methodist Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical College, set out to document the incidence, mortality rate and risk factors for sepsis and septic shock after general surgery. And what they found wasn't pretty. Using data from 363,897 patients, they established that sepsis, a life-threatening blood infection, occurred in 2.3% of those patients and that septic shock, dangerously low blood pressure from said blood infection, occurred in 1.6%.

Flowers and Lakers tickets are nice Valentine's Day gifts. But a guide to taking care of your flesh-and-blood heart is a great idea too. Take a look at " Heart 411 : The Only Guide to Heart Health You'll Ever Need. " This new book is authored by two of the top guns in cardiology: Dr. Marc Gillinov and Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic. The two doctors are on the cutting edge of heart health and have been outspoken about protecting consumers from harmful or unnecessary therapies.

Most of us know about the factors that raise our risk for heart attack: high blood pressure, bad blood lipids, diabetes, smoking, family history of heart attacks. Either that, or we've been living in a cave.  Though a study of more than 500,000 patients just reported in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. doesn't change any of that, it did find something odd:  Among a large group of people admitted to the hospital for their first heart attack, those who had those traditional risk factors were less likely to die of the heart attack than those who arrived at the hospital without any of them.

HEART DISEASE RISK FACTORS Inflammation is a newly recognized risk factor for coronary heart disease. Among the other risk factors: * Increasing age. * Being male. * Having parents with heart disease. * Smoking. * Total cholesterol over 239. * HDL, the good cholesterol, below 35. * High blood pressure. * Lack of physical activity. * Being overweight. * Diabetes. Source: Associated Press

More than half the adolescents in a national survey had two or more risk factors that can lead to chronic disease, such as eating fatty foods and not getting enough exercise, government researchers say. The survey by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. The study was based on a 1992-'93 survey of 6,321 adolescents ages 12 through 17. There are more than 20 million Americans in that age group.

As experts become convinced that many mental disorders begin in childhood and adolescence, responsibility for recognizing problems is shifting to parents, teachers, pediatricians and youth counselors. But researchers can give adults only vague guidelines to help them assess whether children are at risk for mental disorders or show symptoms of an emerging problem.

The vast majority of heart attacks strike people who either smoke, have high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes, debunking the perception that heart problems can strike anyone, researchers said Tuesday. Roughly nine out of 10 patients surveyed suffered from one of the four risk factors, often for years, before experiencing a heart problem, according to a pair of reports that analyzed accumulated data from previous studies.

Uncircumcised men and men with genital warts from venereal disease are at increased risk of infection with the AIDS virus, according to the first published study of risk factors for AIDS virus infection among men in sub-Saharan Africa. The study, published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests that genital ulcers may create an entry point for the virus during heterosexual sex, and an intact foreskin may increase the chance of virus survival and penetration into the body. Dr.

They're called “risk factors” for a reason - people with high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol and/or a smoking habit are much more likely to have heart attacks, strokes and other manifestations of cardiovascular disease, including death. A new study coming out in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine analyzed health data on more than 250,000 adults to confirm that those who had any of these risk factors were in greater peril than those who didn't.

Stand-up comic Patrice O'Neal's death Tuesday at age 41 from complications of a stroke he suffered in October highlights just how relatively common strokes are -- and how dangerous. "Strokes are the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. and the second-leading cause of death in the world -- so it happens to a lot of people," said Dr. John M. Kennedy, director of Preventive Cardiology and Wellness at Marina Del Rey Hospital. The vast majority of strokes -- about 85% -- are ischemic strokes, which means they're caused by something -- often a clot that formed in the heart or a piece of plaque that formed in the carotid artery in the neck -- traveling up and disrupting blood flow to part of the brain.

Most of us know about the factors that raise our risk for heart attack: high blood pressure, bad blood lipids, diabetes, smoking, family history of heart attacks. Either that, or we've been living in a cave.  Though a study of more than 500,000 patients just reported in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. doesn't change any of that, it did find something odd:  Among a large group of people admitted to the hospital for their first heart attack, those who had those traditional risk factors were less likely to die of the heart attack than those who arrived at the hospital without any of them.

Two or more sugar-sweetened drinks a day have been associated with a larger waist and a higher risk of heart disease in adult women, according to research released Sunday. Women ages 45 to 84 who drank at least two sugar-sweetened drinks a day -- such as soda or flavored waters with added sugar -- were nearly four times as likely to develop high triglycerides as women who drank one or fewer of those beverages. Two or more sugar-sweetened drinks a day also were linked to bigger waist size and a higher risk for Type 2 diabetes.

As Americans — including even young children — continue to get fatter, their risk for heart disease is climbing too. So a panel of experts now is recommending that all kids have their cholesterol checked at least once between ages 9 and 11 and again between 17 and 21. Although children typically don't have heart attacks and strokes, evidence has been mounting for years that the roots of those diseases begin early in life, and the rising rates...

Factors that place people at risk for stroke -- including long-term high blood pressure -- could also contribute to memory and thinking problems, a new study finds. Researchers followed more than 23,000 people in the contiguous 48 states and assessed their likelihood of having a stroke. Evaluations were made using the Framingham Stroke Risk Profile (FSRP), which estimates an adult's 10-year risk of having a stroke by measuring his or her age, blood pressure and whether he or she has diabetes, a history of heart disease or a thickening of the heart muscle.

One out of every three adult Americans has high cholesterol levels and two-thirds of them do not have it under control, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. Similarly, one out of every three adults has high blood pressure and half of them do not have it under control. High blood pressure and high cholesterol are two of the major risk factors for heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases, which are the leading cause of death in the United States, killing 800,000 people every year.

Jim Fixx had iron legs and leather lungs and could run a deer to ground, but every step he took brought him closer to an almost instant death at the age of 52. He was stricken by a heart attack because he didn't heed his own advice. In the late 1970s, Fixx was the guru of American running. His jogger's primer, "The Complete Book of Running," has been variously credited with igniting the running revolution and inspiring millions to get out and pound the pavement.

Living in a poorer neighborhood might put people at greater risk for having a sudden cardiac arrest, a study finds. Researchers analyzed data on sudden cardiac arrests over one year among 9,235 people in four U.S. cities and three in Canada. They also looked at median household incomes from census tracts to determine the relationship between the arrests and socioeconomic status. In six of the seven cities, the frequency of sudden cardiac arrests was substantially greater in the lowest socioeconomic areas compared with the highest.

Some women need mammograms more frequently than others, and guidelines should reflect those individual risk profiles, according to authors of a new study on the always-controversial issue of screening for breast cancer. The standard approach, which is based on age alone, has been challenged in recent years by a number of health experts who contend that some women get more mammograms than they need and others get too few. The new paper, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine , argues for a more complex approach to mammography based on personal risk factors such as age, breast density, family history of breast cancer and even a woman's personal preference.