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Amino acid draws suspicion in Alzheimer's study
A link between high blood levels of the amino acid homocysteine and Alzheimer's disease has been found by scientists at Boston University.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is based on data from the long-term study of the population of Framingham, Mass., and provides some of the strongest evidence yet linking high homocysteine levels with significant memory loss.
People with high levels of the amino acid had nearly double the risk for Alzheimer's disease. "The Framingham population gave us the perfect opportunity to look at homocysteine levels in a group of people without memory problems over a period of several years, well before any evidence of dementia," said Dr. Philip Wolf of Boston University, who led the study.
"This is the clearest demonstration yet of the relationship between elevated homocysteine levels and dementia."
One reason the discovery has drawn attention is that blood levels of homocysteine can be reduced by taking folic acid and vitamins B6 and B12. Although it isn't clear yet if taking vitamins can ward off dementia, a study to test that possibility will be launched.
Surgery riskier for women
Women are more likely to die during or shortly after coronary-artery surgery than are men, a new study has found.
"The younger the patients, the greater the mortality difference between women and men," said Dr. Viola Vaccarino of Emory University, who led the study. "Although the percentage of bypass-surgery patients who died in the hospital was relatively small, the difference in both overall mortality and the death rate for patients under age 60 was significant between the two sexes," Vaccarino said.
Overall, 5.3 percent of the women in the study died in the hospital, compared with 2.9 percent of men. But among patients under the age of 50, 3.4 percent of women died and 1.1 percent of the men.
The findings, published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, were based on records of more than 51,000 patients who underwent coronary bypass at 23 medical centers during a six-year period.
Nearly 30 percent of those patients were women.
Vaccarino said that it isn't clear why the difference exists and that this should be studied further.
Dousing hot flashes
Estrogen replacement therapy, once popular with physicians, has come under increasing criticism as being ineffective in protecting women against coronary disease and possibly increasing cancer risk.
But researchers have found that the hormone therapy is effective in relieving the hot-flash symptoms that some women experience with menopause. Now physicians at the Mayo Clinic have concluded that there is another effective treatment for women who would just as soon avoid hormone therapy.
A new Mayo study of the antidepressant drug venlafaxine shows it is safe and effective in the long term. An earlier study found that venlafaxine could combat hot flashes as a short-term measure. The finding is especially significant for women with breast cancer who have hot flashes because physicians want to avoid hormone therapy in those patients, said Dr. Charles Loprinzi, a Mayo oncologist.
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