Children With Asthma at Higher Risk for Shingles: Study (3/5/2012)

Children With Asthma at Higher Risk for Shingles: Study

Painful skin condition typically strikes older adults, researchers note.
MONDAY, March 5 (HealthDay News) -- Children with asthma have a higher risk for developing shingles -- a painful skin rash -- following infection with the herpes zoster virus, new research reveals.

The authors noted that 1 million Americans are estimated to be infected with the herpes zoster virus every year. However, typically it's a problem that strikes men and women over the age of 60 or people with weakened immune systems.

Researchers analyzed 277 medical records involving patients under the age of 18 who had experienced an episode of shingles between 1996 and 2001.

Stacking up the shingles cases against 277 children who had no history of shingles, the team found that asthmatic patients were 2.2 times more likely to have a case of shingles compared to those who did not have asthma.

While 23 percent of the shingles patients had a history of asthma before the onset of shingles, only 35 patients without shingles (about 12.5 percent) had asthma in their past.

The findings are slated to be presented Monday at the American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.

"It had previously been unknown whether asthma status poses an increased risk of shingles among children," study author Dr. Young Juhn, a pediatrician at Mayo Clinic Children's Center in Rochester, Minn., said in an academy news release. "These results suggest that asthma significantly increases the risk for shingles in children."

The researchers' previous work found that microbial infections in people with asthma came from airway-related conditions such as strep infections and whopping cough and serious pneumococcal disease.

"However, shingles is not an airway-related illness, and cell-mediated immune function is an important host-defense mechanism from developing shingles," Juhn said.

Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Source: http://www.womenshealt.gov/new/news/headlines/662398.cfm/

Car, TV Ownership Tied to Higher Risk for Heart Attack (1/11/2012)

Car, TV Ownership Tied to Higher Risk for Heart Attack

But getting active during work and leisure hours can lower the odds, study finds.
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 11 (HealthDay News) -- People who own a car and a television tend to be at increased risk for heart attack, a new study finds.

On the other hand, people in developed and developing countries who are physically active during work and leisure time have a significantly lower risk of heart attack, the researchers found.

The findings come from an analysis of data from more than 29,000 people in 52 countries in Africa, Asia, Australia, North and South America, Europe and the Middle East. The study was published online Jan. 11 in the European Heart Journal.

"Until now, few studies have looked at the different aspects of physical activity both at work and during leisure time in relation to the risk of heart attacks," first author Dr. Claes Held, an associate professor at Uppsala Clinical Research Center and the cardiology department at Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden, said in a journal news release.

"Much is already known about the association between physical activity and cardiovascular risk, but what this study adds, among many other things, is a global perspective. The study shows that mild to moderate physical activity at work, and any level of physical activity during leisure time reduces the risk of heart attack, independent of other traditional risk factors in men and women of all ages, in most regions of the world and in countries with low, middle or high income levels. Interestingly, heavy physical labor at work did not protect against heart attacks," Held said.

The data analysis revealed that people who did light or moderate physical activity at work had a 22 percent and 11 percent lower risk of heart attack, respectively, than those who did little physical activity at work. However, heavy physical labor did not reduce heart attack risk.

Compared to those who did little physical activity during leisure time, the risk of heart attack was 13 percent lower for people who did mild physical activity and 24 percent lower for those who did moderate or strenuous activity during leisure time.

People who owned both a car and TV had a 27 percent higher risk of heart attack than those who owned neither a car nor TV.

A higher percentage of people in low-income nations had sedentary jobs and did less physical activity in their leisure time, compared to those in middle- and high-income countries, the researchers noted.

"These differences in PA [physical activity] were most pronounced regarding leisure-time activity," they wrote. "This may partly be explained by differences in education and other socio-economic factors. In addition, this may also reflect differences in culture and in climate." It's less likely that an individual will performing leisure-time physical activity in tropical or hot climate zones than in more temperate areas of the world, they added.

All people should be encouraged to get daily moderate exercise in order to prevent heart disease, the researchers concluded.

"The data have some real-life implications," Held said. One suggestion could be getting lower-income countries more involved in promoting physical activity as their societies start to use more labor-saving devices, he said.

Source: http://www.womenshealth.gov/new//news/headlines/660549.cfm/