Calcium supplements reduce fractures
In people older than 50, calcium supplements cut the overall risk of bone fractures by about 12 percent, Australian researchers report.
Dr. Benjamin Tang of the University of Western Sydney and colleagues analyzed 17 previous studies of more than 52,600 people over age 50. All of the participants took calcium supplements for an average of three to five years but in varying doses.
Daily calcium doses of more than 1,200 milligrams reduced fracture risk by 20 percent compared with 6 percent for doses of less than 1,200 milligrams, according to the research.
Calcium supplementation, in combination with vitamin D doses of 800 international units (IU) per day, reduced fracture risk by 16 percent, compared with 13 percent for vitamin D doses of less than 800 IU.
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Heart attack can lead to diabetes
After a heart attack, the risk of developing diabetes and so-called pre-diabetes rises steeply, a new study finds.
In fact, recent heart attack patients are up to 4 1/2 times more likely to develop diabetes compared with the general population and at least 15 times more likely to develop high blood sugar, according to the report in The Lancet.
“Having a heart attack means that the chances of getting diabetes later are increased,” said Dr. Lionel Opie, director of the Hatter Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and author of an accompanying journal editorial. “We already know that diabetes predisposes one to heart attack, now we add that heart attacks predispose one to diabetes — one nasty disease leads to another, and it’s a two-way process.”
In the study, researchers led by Dr. Roberto Marchioli of Chieti, Italy, collected data on almost 8,300 Italian patients who had suffered a recent heart attack and were not previously diabetic.
More than 3 1/2 years after the heart attack, a third of the patients had developed diabetes or had impaired insulin resistance (a precursor to diabetes), as measured by an increase in blood sugar.
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Ailing alcoholic liver can poison brain
Alcoholics with scarring and dysfunction of the liver have more brain function impairment than other alcoholics, according to new research.
“We found that the levels of many important brain genes changed in the cirrhotic patients. These genes are important in regulating cell death and how individual cells in the brain talk to each other in a meaningful way,” said study corresponding author R. Dayne Mayfield, a research scientist at the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research at the University of Texas at Austin.
Mayfield noted that in people with cirrhosis, the liver is unable to remove poisons from the blood. These poisons can move into the brain and disrupt normal function.
About 10 percent to 20 percent of heavy drinkers develop cirrhosis, which is the seventh leading cause of death among young and middle-aged adults in the United States. Each year in the United States, 10,000 to 24,000 people die from alcohol-related cirrhosis.
