Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Garlic Supplements Lower Blood Pressure
2. Exercise in a Pill
3. Living with Spouse Decreases Alzheimer’s Risk 50 Percent
4. Flu Vaccine May Not Protect Seniors Well
5. Risk of Metabolic Syndrome Rises Near Menopause

1. Garlic Supplements Lower Blood Pressure

Garlic supplements may lower blood pressure just as effectively as some drugs used to treat hypertension can, according to a new research review.

"Supplementation with garlic preparations may provide an acceptable alternative or complementary treatment option for hypertension," Dr. Karin Ried and colleagues from The University of Adelaide in South Australia write.

Research to date on garlic and blood pressure has had "inconclusive" results, they note, while the last meta-analysis - in which the results of several studies are analyzed collectively -- only included studies done up until 1994.

To provide an updated perspective, Ried and her team included more recently published studies in their analysis, identifying 11 studies in which the patients were randomly assigned to garlic or placebo. In most studies, participants given garlic took it in powdered form, as a standardized supplement. Doses ranged from 600 mg to 900 mg daily, which study participants took for 12 to 23 weeks.

When the researchers pooled the data from the trials, they found that garlic reduced systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood pressure reading) by 4.6 mm Hg, on average. An analysis limited to people with high blood pressure showed garlic reduced systolic blood pressure by 8.4 mm Hg, on average, and diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) by 7.3 mm Hg. The higher a person's blood pressure -was at the beginning of the study, the more it was reduced by taking garlic.

The effects were similar to those of widely used drugs for treating hypertension, for example beta blockers, which reduce systolic blood pressure by 5 mm Hg, and ACE inhibitors, which produce an 8 mm Hg average drop in systolic blood pressure, the researchers note.

The 600 mg to 900 mg dosage used in the studies is equivalent to 3.6 mg to 5.4 mg of garlic's active ingredient, allicin, Ried and her team point out. A fresh clove of garlic contains 5 mg to 9 mg of allicin.

In the population as a whole, they note, reducing systolic blood pressure by an average of 4 to 5 points and diastolic blood pressure by 2 to 3 points could cut the risk of heart disease and heart disease-related death by up to 20 percent.

More research is needed to determine whether garlic supplementation might have a long-term effect on heart disease risk, the researchers conclude.

Copyright Reuters

Editor's Note:

• High Blood Pressure and Heart Disease Caused by Your Salt and Sugar-Filled Diet.

2. Exercise in a Pill

Here's a couch potato's dream: What if a drug could help you gain some of the benefits of exercise without working up a sweat? Scientists reported Thursday that there is such a drug — if you happen to be a mouse.

Sedentary mice that took the drug for four weeks burned more calories and had less fat than untreated mice. And when tested on a treadmill, they could run about 44 percent farther and 23 percent longer than untreated mice.

Just how well those results might translate to people is an open question. But someday, researchers say, such a drug might help treat obesity, diabetes and people with medical conditions that keep them from exercising.

"We have exercise in a pill," said Ron Evans, an author of the study. "With no exercise, you can take a drug and chemically mimic it."

Evans, of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute reports the work with colleagues in a paper published online Thursday by the journal Cell.

They also report that in mice that did exercise training, a second drug made their workout much more effective at boosting endurance. After a month of taking that drug and exercising, mice could run 68 percent longer and 70 percent farther than other mice that exercised but didn't get the drug.

Both drugs have been studied by researchers for other uses. The no-exercise drug is in advanced human testing to see if it can prevent a complication of heart bypass surgery.

The no-exercise drug is called AICAR. Previous experiments suggest that it might protect against gaining weight on a high-fat diet, which might make it useful for treating obesity, Evans said. But it would have to be taken for a long time, he said, so its safety in people would have to be assured.

Experts who study muscle agreed that a drug like AICAR may prove useful someday in treating obesity and diabetes. Many drug companies are working on such drugs in diabetes because in animals, AICAR stimulates muscles to remove sugar from the blood, noted Laurie Goodyear of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.

People who can't exercise because of a medical condition like joint pain or heart failure might also benefit from such a drug, experts said.

But Eric Hoffman of the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., noted that AICAR mimics only aerobic exercise, not the strength training that might be more useful to bedridden people or the elderly, for example. He also cautioned that it's not clear whether the new mouse results can be reproduced in people.

Goodyear said exercise has such widespread benefits in the body that she doubts any one pill will ever be able to supply all of them. "For the majority of people," she said, "it would be better to do exercise than to take a pill."

Copyright AP

Editor's Note:

• Food Additives in Your Diet May Be Making You Fat.

3. Living with Spouse Decreases Alzheimer’s Risk 50 Percent

Living with a spouse or a partner decreases the risk of developing Alzheimer's and other dementia diseases. This according to a study by Krister Håkansson, researcher in psychology at Växjö University and Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. The results were presented for the first time yesterday at the world's largest dementia conference.

"This is, for me, an overwhelming start," says Mr Håkansson. "It's the first study I've done in this field, and the results are astounding. They indicate a very strong correlation between this type of social factor and the risk of developing dementia."

The new findings are based on data from a Finnish study, which was unique in that 2,000 people were examined at the age of around 50 and again twenty-one years later. Normally, dementia researchers only study late-life individuals. Previous research has shown that an active lifestyle, both intellectually and socially, can decrease the risk of developing dementia; since a shared life often entails considerable social and intellectual stimulation, the point of inquiry of this present study was whether living with a spouse or a partner can help to ward off dementia.

The results show that people living with a spouse or a partner in midlife ran a 50 per cent lower risk of developing dementia than people living alone, even when controlled for other risk factors, such as age.

How long a person had been single and for what reasons also affected the chances of developing dementia. Those who had lived alone their entire adult life ran twice the risk, while those who were divorced in midlife and remained subsequently single ran three times the risk.

Widows and widowers ran the greatest risk. Those at greatest risk of developing dementia diseases were people who had lost their partner before middle age and then continued to live as a widow or widower. The study showed that the chances of developing Alzheimer's for these individuals were six times greater than for married couples.

"This suggests two influencing factors – social and intellectual stimulation and trauma," says Mr Håkansson. "In practice, it shows how important it is to put resources into helping people who have undergone a crisis. If our interpretation will hold, such an intervention strategy could also be profitable for society considering the costs for dementia care."

Editor's Note:

• Brain Surgeon Reveals How to Save Your Brain from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Other Diseases.

4. Flu Vaccine May Not Protect Seniors Well

A Group Health study in the August 2 issue of The Lancet adds fuel to the growing controversy over how well the flu vaccine protects the elderly.

The study of more than 3,500 Group Health patients age 65+ found no link between flu vaccination and risk of pneumonia during three flu seasons. "This suggests that the flu vaccine doesn't protect seniors as much as has been thought," said Michael L. Jackson, PhD, MPH, a postdoctoral fellow at the Group Health Center for Health Studies.

"Ours is by far the largest case-control study of flu vaccine in the elderly," Jackson added. This kind of study compares "cases" with "controls." The cases were patients with "community-acquired" pneumonia treated in a hospital or elsewhere. The controls were people matched to cases by sex and age, but with no pneumonia. Both groups were found to have similar rates of flu vaccination. All had intact immune systems and none lived in a nursing home.

Jackson and his colleagues carefully reviewed medical records to reveal details of seniors' health and ability to do daily activities. "We tried to overcome the limits of previous studies done by others," he explained. "Those studies may have overestimated the benefits of the flu vaccine in the elderly for various reasons." For instance, those studies looked only at pneumonia cases treated in a hospital. They also included seniors who had immune problems, which limit potential benefit from vaccination. And they didn't review medical records to get information on chronic diseases, such as heart or lung disease, which raise the risk of pneumonia.

Most importantly, those previous studies also failed to account for differences between healthier seniors and those who were "frail," Jackson said. Frail seniors are older and have chronic diseases and difficulty walking. "They are less likely than younger, healthier seniors to go out and get vaccinated—and more apt to develop pneumonia," he said.

Pneumonia is a common and potentially life-threatening complication of the flu, Jackson said. But pneumonia can happen without the flu. "That's why our study used a control time period, after flu vaccine became available but before each flu season actually started," he said. During those pre-flu-season periods, people who had been vaccinated were much less likely to get pneumonia. Why? "Because those who got the vaccine happened to be healthier—not because the flu vaccine was protecting them from pneumonia caused by the flu, since it wasn't present yet," he explained.

"Despite our findings, and even though immune responses are known to decline with age, I still want my grandmother to keep getting the flu vaccine," said Jackson. "The flu vaccine is safe. So it seems worth getting, even if it might lower the risk of pneumonia and death only slightly."

His co-author Lisa A. Jackson, MD, MPH (no relation), a senior investigator at the Group Health Center for Health Studies, agreed. "People age 65 and older should still get yearly flu vaccines as usual," she advised. But she said that researchers should work to understand better how well the current flu vaccines work in seniors—and to explore other options for controlling flu in the "old old." Examples include bigger doses or stronger types of vaccines, and conducting randomized controlled trials comparing them.

Editor's Note:

• Common Vaccines Are Putting Your Family’s Health at Risk.

5. Risk of Metabolic Syndrome Rises Near Menopause

As women begin to enter menopause, their risk of developing a collection of heart disease risk factors appears to climb, a study has found.

Researchers found that among 949 U.S. women followed for nearly a decade, the risk of developing metabolic syndrome increased during perimenopause — the years during which a woman's body begins to transition into menopause, usually starting somewhere in her 40s.

Metabolic syndrome refers to this cluster of risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes — including high blood pressure, abdominal obesity, high blood sugar, low levels of "good" HDL cholesterol and high triglycerides (another type of blood fat). The syndrome is usually diagnosed when a person has three or more of these traits.

The new findings, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, appear to be the first showing that the incidence of metabolic syndrome begins to rise during perimenopause.

The "main message" here for women is that maintaining a healthy lifestyle may be especially critical during perimenopause, lead researcher Dr. Imke Janssen, of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, told Reuters Health.

Not smoking, eating a healthy diet and getting regular exercise can all help reduce a woman's risk of the various components of metabolic syndrome, Janssen said.

She and her colleagues based their findings on an ethnically diverse sample of U.S. women who were between the ages of 42 and 52 and free of metabolic syndrome at the outset. The women were followed for nine years.

Overall, Janssen's team found, nearly 14 percent developed metabolic syndrome by the time they had their final menstrual period. The risk of developing the syndrome increased progressively starting six years before the final menstrual period.

But while the odds of developing metabolic syndrome were elevated after menopause, the risk was greater during perimenopause, Janssen noted.

It has long been known that women generally have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than men do before the age of 45. But after age 55, the trend reverses, with women actually being at greater risk than men their age.

"Obviously, something happens there, between 45 and 55," Janssen said, noting that it was once assumed that diminishing levels of estrogen told the whole story.

But in this study, women's estrogen levels were unrelated to the odds of developing the metabolic syndrome. Instead, the syndrome correlated with an increase in testosterone activity — suggesting that the direct negative effects of testosterone are more important than the loss of estrogen's positive effects in women's cardiovascular risks.

This idea, Janssen and her colleagues note, is consistent with clinical trials that have found no cardiovascular benefits from estrogen replacement therapy.

The bottom line for women, according to Janssen, is that during these years of hormonal change, healthy habits become more important than ever.

SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, July 28, 2008.

Copyright Reuters

Editor's Note:

• Prevent Heart Attacks With Natural Remedies, Not Drugs.

Editor's Notes:

• High Blood Pressure and Heart Disease Caused by Your Salt and Sugar-Filled Diet.
• Food Additives in Your Diet May Be Making You Fat.
• Brain Surgeon Reveals How to Save Your Brain from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Other Diseases.
• Common Vaccines Are Putting Your Family’s Health at Risk.
• Prevent Heart Attacks With Natural Remedies, Not Drugs.
• Supplements That Keep You Living Long and Healthy.
• Go Eleven Key Strategies for Preventing Diabetes.
• Japanese Men Rarely Get Prostate Cancer: Here’s Why