Health & Medicine
Health Watch: Good for the Heart?
Go ahead, ladies, ask for an extra shot of espresso in your latte. The caffeine might spike your blood pressure until lunchtime, but it won't have a lasting effect, according to a study out last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study followed the caffeine habits of more than 155,000 women for 12 years and found no direct association between their total intake and high blood pressure.
Other ingredients in caffeinated beverages might have an effect, however. Researchers found that daily consumption of cola did boost the risk of high blood pressure, while several cups of coffee actually reduced it. It's not clear why cola acts differently from coffee or even if the drinks are causing the changes in blood pressure, says lead author Wolfgang Winkelmayer, an internist and nephrologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. But he points out that coffee contains antioxidants that might protect women's hearts. Women who drank more than three cups a day were 7 to 9 percent less likely to have high blood pressure than those who drank none, says Winkelmayer--not enough for nonimbibers to bother starting to indulge.
Health Watch: He May Just Need a Good Gargle
A child's sore throat can signal many things, and most--save for strep--don't require antibiotics. Yet doctors often hand out a prescription anyway. A study by Harvard researchers published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association surveyed national statistics on doctors' visits from 1995 to 2003 and found that 53 percent of children with sore throats got antibiotics though only 17 percent were diagnosed with strep. Antibiotics target strep-causing bacteria; colds are caused by viruses.
Why does it matter? Bacteria gradually develop resistance to antibiotics, which means that the drugs become less powerful the more they are used.
Health Watch: A Pill That Greatly Ups the Odds
Causing a stroke when trying to prevent one isn't great medicine. Yet surgically cleaning plaque from the carotid arteries can do just that in as many as 5 percent of patients. Now research shows that taking statins--the cholesterol-lowering drugs--before a carotid endarterectomy reduces the stroke rate to just over 1 percent. "It was an astounding result," says Johns Hopkins surgeon Bruce Perler, lead author of the new study in this month's Journal of Vascular Surgery. Why do statins help? The drugs may keep plaques from fragmenting and shooting into the brain. "They do a lot more than lower cholesterol," says Roy Greenberg, director of endovascular research at the Cleveland Clinic, though he notes that some people can't tolerate the drugs.
Health Watch: An Earlier Screen for Down Syndrome
Current prenatal tests for Down syndrome, usually performed in the second trimester, give parents only a few weeks to decide whether to terminate the pregnancy. But a multicenter study published in last week's New England Journal of Medicine offers evidence that testing can be done effectively during the first trimester. Reliable early screening leaves parents time for a first-trimester abortion, which carries far less risk than one performed later, or for a more extended period of adjustment before the birth.
The early screen involves a blood test for the level of two markers that suggest Down syndrome and an ultrasound test, called a nuchal translucency measurement, for fluid at the back of the fetus's neck. That can indicate a genetic defect.
This story appears in the November 21, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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