Heart Disease

LOS ANGELES - Want a clue to your risk of heart disease? Look in the mirror. People who look old - with receding hairlines, bald heads, creases near their earlobes, or bumpy deposits on their eyelids - have a greater chance of developing heart disease than younger-looking people the same age do, new research suggests. Doctors say the study highlights the difference between biological and chronological age. "Looking old for your age marks poor cardiovascular health," said Anne Tybjaerg-Hansen of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

LOS ANGELES - Want a clue to your risk of heart disease? Look in the mirror. People who look old have a greater chance of developing heart disease than younger-looking people the same age do, new research suggests. Doctors say the study, presented at an American Heart Association conference, highlights the difference between biological and chronological age. Those with three to four of the aging signs - receding hairline at the temples, baldness at the crown of the head, earlobe creases or yellowish fatty deposits around the eyelids - had a 57 percent greater risk for heart attack and a 39 percent greater risk for heart disease compared to people with none of these signs.

WASHINGTON - A national board of doctors Monday recommended that post-menopausal women not take hormone replacement therapy to prevent chronic disease, because the health risks that HRT poses outweigh its likely benefits. The statement, from the United States Preventive Services Task Force, confirms a similar recommendation that the panel made in 2005. The statement was posted on the online edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine . The task force's review of research published since 2005 showed that combined estrogen and progestin therapy after menopause reduces the risk of bone fractures.

By Mary Woolley A Nobel Prize is the most widely sought-after and treasured global recognition of our times, and rightly so. The achievements of the laureates, including this year's winners, have had a far-reaching impact on our lives, from discoveries related to stem-cell research to those involving quantum particles. Yet unlike Olympic medalists, the winners of the prizes for medicine and physiology, physics, and chemistry - respectively, John Gurdon of Britain and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka, Serge Haroche of France and American David Wineland, and Americans Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka - will not be celebrated by a broad segment of society.

When New York recently banned super-size sugary drink sales in that city, critics blasted Mayor Michael Bloomberg's latest public health initiative as nanny-state policy gone wild. But Bloomberg's brand of activism to counter his town's expanding waistlines will be more and more in demand if new predictions on the nation's obesity rate prove accurate. With two-thirds of Americans already overweight, a study funded by the respected Robert Wood Johnson Foundation now forecasts a staggering rise in obesity in less than two decades - with as many as one out of every two people being obese by 2030.

'90s whooping cough vaccine weakens faster than thought As the U.S. wrestles with its biggest whooping cough outbreak in decades, researchers appear to have zeroed in on the main cause: The safer vaccine that was introduced in the 1990s loses effectiveness much faster than previously thought. A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the protective effect weakens dramatically soon after a youngster gets the last of the five recommended shots around age 6. The protection rate falls from about 95 percent to 71 percent within five years, said researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Research Center in Oakland, Calif.

THEY OUGHT to give Hungary's Daniel Gyurta another gold medal, for compassion. Gyurta, who won the 200-meter breaststroke, said he will make a copy of his medal and give it to the family of fellow swimmer Dale Oen, of Norway. Oen, who was favored to medal at the London Games, died in April after suffering a heart attack. The 26-year old was apparently unaware he had heart disease. "We became very good friends this year," Gyurta said. "I'm sure that he would have won the 100 here in London.

Numerous studies have found that erectile dysfunction is a better predictor of future heart disease than well-known risk factors such as smoking, high cholesterol, and family history of heart attacks - especially in middle-aged men. Based on a review of the research, an international group of experts including Allen D. Seftel, head of urology at Cooper University Hospital, is urging physicians to ask about ED symptoms in all men over age 30. ...

It was already 89 degrees at 10 a.m. Saturday when block captain Alice Wright began knocking on doors in the 3900 block of Pennsgrove Street. The temperature in Philadelphia would eventually climb an additional 12 degrees, to 101. The retired day-care teacher was checking on the people she calls "my seniors," some of whom are the same age as the 70-year-old Wright. "Geneva!" Wright yelled, bending down to call her neighbor through an open mail slot. "She's in there. She's just hard of hearing.