Risk Factors

Dementia and its evil twin, Alzheimer's, may have moved ahead of cancer on the list of most feared diseases, especially among baby boomers, who have begun to believe it is their inescapable fate if they have the bad luck to live too long. So we grasp at any news about aging, hoping that medical science has indeed found a way to preserve that most essential part of who we are - our memories. Do we protect our minds by doing the New York Times crossword puzzle or by doing aerobics?

Despite the economic good times, 9.2 million American children - one in seven - are in serious distress and at risk of having continuing problems later in life. These youngsters are at risk not just for one reason, but for many. What makes their situation especially dire is that each is burdened with four or more measurable risk factors, as identified by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in its new Kids Count Data Book, which was released today. The factors are: the child is growing up in a single-parent home; the household head does not have a high school diploma; family income is below the poverty line; a parent does not have steady full-time employment; the family is receiving welfare benefits; and the child lacks health insurance.

Ahlayshia Holmes. Amire Lowe. Charnae Wise. Raymond Graves. These young Philadelphians all died this year, allegedly at the hands of adult relatives. Though the abuse they suffered is extreme compared to what social workers normally encounter, it is still indicative of the harsh realities that thousands of city preschoolers face day in and day out. According to a new city-commissioned report, an alarmingly large number of young children are exposed to myriad risk factors that keep them from excelling once they begin school.

Jeff Jacoby (column, May 12) challenges the science used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to estimate how many people die from cigarette smoking each year in the United States. The column was based on an article by Robert Levy and Rosalind Marimont in Regulation magazine, which contains numerous errors about the harm of smoking. Levy and Marimont claim the government counts as a smoking-related death all smokers who die from a certain disease, even if they had other risk factors.

Every year, more than 45,000 American women die from breast cancer. Seventy-five percent of those women have no risk factors. These women are among the most susceptible to the disease because they feel that since they have no risk factors, they are immune. Because of this false sense of security, these and many more women will die from breast cancer this year, although they could greatly increase their chances of survival by taking a few minutes out of their routines to conduct breast examinations.

THE SPORTING LIFE What is this? Runners swilling beer after an important race? Yes, but it is nonalcoholic beer that runners increasingly are reaching for after they hit the finish line, Runner's World magazine reports. Not only are such brews palatable and refreshing, they also supply needed carbohydrates and fluids. The alcohol in regular beer acts as a diuretic, but nonalcoholic beer, which is less than 0.5 percent alcohol, does not leave you dry or drunk, the magazine says.

Baldness can be bad for your heart. That's the conclusion of a report published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That baldness is bad for the heart is no secret to thousands of lighter- on-top men toiling in the singles bars and computer dating files of America. But romance isn't the interest of the JAMA report. Dr. Samuel M. Lesko of Boston University School of Medicine studied 1,437 men ages 21 to 54 at 35 New England hospitals and found that men with male- pattern baldness may face a "modest" increased risk of heart attack.

William B. Kannel, 87, a cardiovascular epidemiologist whose work helped to identify and sought to rout the culprits behind heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular diseases, died Saturday of cancer in Natick, Mass. At his death, he was emeritus professor of medicine and public health at the Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Kannel was a former director of the Framingham Heart Study, the longest, most comprehensive study of the American heart ever undertaken. Begun in 1948 and continuing to this day, it followed an initial group of more than 5,000 Framingham residents over many years to determine the causes of cardiovascular disease.

Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that "everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. " The current debate about the global epidemic of non-communicable diseases - chronic conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer - has ignored this advice. Policymakers have oversimplified the challenge by focusing on the growing prevalence of non-communicable diseases - the sheer number of people with these diseases - which is not really the problem. True, almost all regions of the world are experiencing an increase in the prevalence of these diseases, partly because as deaths from acute infectious diseases and injuries decline, people live long enough to develop them.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health has awarded $23 million from the national tobacco settlement to fund research into such issues as heart disease, mental illness, drug abuse, and high blood pressure. The money will be awarded in six grants to three Pennsylvania universities: Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Pittsburgh. The universities will lead groups of colleges and health organizations in the research, and the money will be disbursed March 1. This is the second year the state has awarded competitive health grants funded by the tobacco settlement, which is expected to last until 2025.

Dementia and its evil twin, Alzheimer's, may have moved ahead of cancer on the list of most feared diseases, especially among baby boomers, who have begun to believe it is their inescapable fate if they have the bad luck to live too long. So we grasp at any news about aging, hoping that medical science has indeed found a way to preserve that most essential part of who we are - our memories. Do we protect our minds by doing the New York Times crossword puzzle or by doing aerobics?

Question: Is it true that the reason why people say "God bless you" after someone sneezes is that the heart stops beating? Answer: Fortunately, the heart doesn't stop when we sneeze. The sneeze reflex is analogous to the cough reflex, in that it's an automatic response to an irritation. The walls of the nasal cavity are irritated, conducting nerve impulses to the brain. The uvula (which hangs down from your upper palate above the tongue) closes off the mouth area from the upper airway so that air is forcefully directed through the nose.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Maria Medina's life is littered with the destruction of diabetes. Her neighbor had a foot amputated because of the disease. Her mother went blind from it. Her sister died of it. Damage that pervasive is a common experience in the Mexican-American community, which has some of the highest rates in a surge of diabetes nationwide. The disease can provoke heart attacks, high blood pressure, kidney failure and blindness, and is the seventh-leading cause of death nationwide.

Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that "everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. " The current debate about the global epidemic of non-communicable diseases - chronic conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer - has ignored this advice. Policymakers have oversimplified the challenge by focusing on the growing prevalence of non-communicable diseases - the sheer number of people with these diseases - which is not really the problem. True, almost all regions of the world are experiencing an increase in the prevalence of these diseases, partly because as deaths from acute infectious diseases and injuries decline, people live long enough to develop them.

William B. Kannel, 87, a cardiovascular epidemiologist whose work helped to identify and sought to rout the culprits behind heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular diseases, died Saturday of cancer in Natick, Mass. At his death, he was emeritus professor of medicine and public health at the Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Kannel was a former director of the Framingham Heart Study, the longest, most comprehensive study of the American heart ever undertaken. Begun in 1948 and continuing to this day, it followed an initial group of more than 5,000 Framingham residents over many years to determine the causes of cardiovascular disease.

Poverty, long known to be a major factor behind the HIV epidemic in urban areas, is such a powerful force that income and related measures are better predictors of who will get infected than whether a person exchanges sex for money, according to a new federal study of heterosexuals in 24 cities. The study, published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was too small to break out findings on Philadelphia or the other cities. But it helps explain why Philadelphia has some of the highest HIV rates in the country, as Philadelphia is among the most impoverished of big cities.

Risk factors linked to sudden cardiac death University of Pennsylvania researchers have identified risk factors that put postmenopausal women with heart disease at high risk of sudden cardiac death - abruptly dying of a lethal arrythmia. Currently, the only established risk factor for sudden cardiac death is weak heart contractions, measured by an echocardiogram. But many heart disease patients whose heart develops a lethal arrythmia don't have this weakening. For their study, the Penn researchers analyzed data from a previous study of 2,763 postmenopausal heart disease patients.

Could delayed childbearing, infertility treatment, and premature birth contribute to autism? Research presented this week in Philadelphia suggests the answer is yes. The International Meeting for Autism Research, attended by more than 1,700 scientists and advocates at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, offered provocative findings from studies of large population groups. Such epidemiological research can uncover risk factors that are too subtle to detect in small groups or individuals.

In his second day of testimony in the first New Jersey product-liability trial for Merck & Co. Inc.'s pain reliever Vioxx, cardiologist Theodore Tyberg maintained that Frederick "Mike" Humeston's 2001 heart attack had been triggered by acute work-related stress. An attorney for Humeston spent much of the day trying to undermine Tyberg's contention that the 60-year-old Idaho postal worker had a number of risk factors, such as high blood pressure, weight problems, sedentary lifestyle, and a possible family history of coronary disease, that caused his heart attack.