Research from the University of Georgia indicates that head-starting — raising a species in captivity and releasing it into a protected habitat after it has grown large enough to be less vulnerable to predators — is a useful intervention for boosting the state’s gopher tortoise population, which has been declining in numbers for decades due to predation, poaching and loss of suitable habitat.

A new study says pink noise may be the key to separating out natural climate variability from climate change that is influenced by human activity.

Older kidney failure patients on haemodialysis have high rates of dementia, which is associated with an increased risk of early death, a new study shows.

Researchers analysed data from nearly 357 000 dialysis patients aged 66 and older and found their risk of being diagnosed with dementia one and five years after starting dialysis was 4.6% and 16% among women, and 3.7 and 13% among men.

Their respective risks of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease were 0.6% and 2.6% among women, and 0.4% and 2% among men.

Previous research suggests that the 10-year incidence of dementia is 1.0 to 1.5% in adults aged 65 and 7.4 to 7.6% in adults aged 75.

Higher risk of early death

The study authors estimated that the risk of dementia diagnosis within 10 years of starting dialysis is 19% for patients aged 66 to 70, and 28% for those aged 76 to 80.

Dialysis patients at highest risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease were found to be over the age of 86, black, female and in a nursing home or other institution.

The researchers also found that dialysis patients with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease had a twofold higher risk of dying early.

Dialysis is the process of using a machine to purify the blood of people whose kidneys are no longer working properly.

The study was published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

“We wanted to shed light on the high burden of diagnosed dementia in older patients with kidney failure who initiate haemodialysis,” Dr Mara McAdams-DeMarco, from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in a journal news release.

“While we were able to study diagnosed dementia, there is a great need to also identify patients with mild cognitive impairment as well as undiagnosed dementia,” she added.

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A new study in the current online edition of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, suggests that open workspaces without partitions between desks encourage employees to be more active and help curb stress.

“We are becoming an increasingly sedentary workforce, and anything that we can do, even passively, to nudge physical activity up will have enormous benefits,” said lead researcher Casey Lindberg.

Lower stress levels

He and his colleagues tracked physical activity and stress levels of 231 government employees, all of whom were described as healthy. Some worked in an open office, with either low partitions between desks or none at all. Others worked in offices outfitted with high-walled cubicles or in fully walled-off spaces.

Workers in open offices were 20% more active than those in cubicles, and 32% more active than colleagues in private offices, the study found. And compared to more sedentary colleagues, more active workers had 14% lower stress levels outside the office.

But how does it get people moving?

“The difference in activity at the office may be in part due to an increased awareness of others when in an open workstation setting,” Lindberg said.

That may prompt workers to move around in search of privacy when engaging with others in person or by phone.

For three days and two nights, participants in the study wore devices to monitor their heart and overall activity. They also completed hourly surveys to track mood swings on the job. A longer survey at the end gauged overall stress levels.

After adjusting for a range of factors, including age, gender and obesity, researchers observed that overall, men were more active at the office than women, and younger and leaner workers were less stressed on the job than their older, heavier peers.

‘A new conversation’

On average, though, those working in open settings were found to be significantly more active and less stressed out on the job than those in less open work environments.

That said, Lindberg noted that while an open office layout appears to be associated with better mental health, the study does not prove cause and effect. Other office design features, such as access to stairwells or informal meeting spaces, might also affect worker stress, Lindberg said.

Still, he and his team hope that their findings lead to “a new conversation about the pros and cons of different aspects of office design on health outcomes”.

Dr Joe Verghese, chief of the Divisions of Cognitive and Motor Aging at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, reviewed the findings.

“It makes sense that workplace environments, where people spend a major part of their weekdays, may influence stress levels,” he said.

“A caveat is that there are a number of other factors, including the type of work, workflow, education, cultural and gender differences, and personality types, that might also influence stress levels,” Dr Verghese added. 

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There are a host of health benefits that breastfeeding brings to a baby, but a new study suggests it may also lower a mom’s stroke risk later in life.

The research found that women who breastfeed have a 23% lower risk of stroke after menopause. The link was even stronger among black women, who had a 48% lower risk of postmenopausal stroke.

The findings were published online in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The study also found that the longer women breastfed, the lower their stroke risk.

Ways to prevent stroke

“Breastfeeding is one of many factors that could help protect against stroke,” said study author Lisette Jacobson. She’s an assistant professor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita.

Stroke is the fourth leading cause of death among US women aged 65 and older, the researchers said. It’s the third leading cause of death among older Hispanic and black women in the United States.

Known ways to prevent stroke include eating a healthy diet, maintaining a healthy weight, getting regular exercise, not smoking, limiting the amount of alcohol you drink, and controlling chronic medical conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new study looked at more than 80 000 women who participated in the Women’s Health Initiative observational study. Their average age was nearly 64, and all had given birth to one or more children.

Fifty-eight percent reported ever breastfeeding. Fifty-one percent of those women breastfed from one to six months, and 22% did so for seven to 12 months. Twenty-seven percent of women breastfed for more than a year.

Among the entire study group, 2 700 women had a stroke during nearly 13 years of follow-up, the findings showed.

Unable to show biological mechanism

After adjusting the data to account for other stroke risk factors, such as age and family history, the researchers found that women who breastfed for any length of time had a 23% lower risk of stroke. Women who breastfed for one to six months had a reduced risk of 19%, while women who breastfed for more than six months had a reduced risk of about one-quarter.

The association between breastfeeding and a reduced risk of stroke was strongest in black women. Hispanic women also appeared to benefit significantly – reducing their risk of stroke by 32%. However, Jacobson said there weren’t enough Hispanic women in the group to know if the association held up for Hispanic women over a longer duration of breastfeeding.

Jacobson was also quick to point out that this study wasn’t designed to tease out a cause-and-effect relationship.

She did add that previous studies have suggested that women who breastfeed have better heart health later in life, with reduced risks of high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol and metabolic syndrome.

Dr Larry Goldstein, a spokesperson for the American Stroke Association, said the study was well-conducted, but also noted that it was unable to show an underlying biological mechanism that could account for the decreased stroke risk.

“Although it is premature to conclude that breastfeeding directly leads to a reduction in later-life stroke risk, this study should not dissuade women from breastfeeding, and if anything, [should] further encourage them to do so,” he said.

“There are a large variety of benefits of breastfeeding for the child, and likely for the mother, supporting evidence-based guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization,” Goldstein added.

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Many studies have pointed to the serious health threats of long periods of uninterrupted sitting at home or at work.

Even if you get in a 30-minute exercise session a day, that may not be enough to undo all the damage of sitting.

A goal of two hours

An overall sedentary lifestyle has been linked to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, some cancers and premature death. Compounding the problem, not enough people are even meeting that basic goal of 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week.

In North America and Europe, between 70 and 95% of people are classified as inactive. What’s the answer? According to a panel of British health experts, sedentary office workers must find ways to get off their rears during every workday.

The ideal is to stand, move or do light activity for at least four hours daily. To make it easier, they suggest starting off with a goal of two hours, or about 15 minutes per hour of the average workday, and working up from there.

One way to achieve this is with an adjustable workstation that allows you to alternate between sitting and standing. If it’s not possible to get a desk that lifts, investigate getting a desktop device that raises and lowers your computer.

More ideas to get you moving:

• Twice a day, stand up and do a series of stretches targeting the neck, shoulders, back and legs.
• Use every coffee break to take a brisk walk around the office or through the building lobby.
• Don’t work through lunch – have it away from your desk even if you can’t get outside.
• Use a fitness tracker to count your steps – watching the number climb is a great motivator to do more.

Keep in mind that you may need to increase movement gradually to avoid feeling fatigue or even soreness from suddenly standing or moving a lot more.

And here’s a note for people who stand up at work all day: Break up your time with some seat-based work – prolonged static standing may itself be harmful.

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Although the male rate is falling, men still account for three-quarters of suicides in the UK.

According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation South Africa, 225 South Africans are killed by heart diseases every day, 45% of adults have high blood pressure and 10 people suffer a stroke every hour. 

With these alarming statistics, it comes as good news that a new method of diagnosing heart attack patients in the emergency department is more accurate and faster than current methods. 

The laboratory score can also identify patients at risk of more heart problems after they leave the hospital, according to the study in the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

“This lab score may reduce both the number of blood tests and time spent in the emergency department for chest pain patients,” Andrew Worster, from McMaster University in Ontario, said in a journal news release.

Currently, diagnosis of a heart attack requires multiple blood tests over several hours. Previous studies using cardiac troponin levels alone to diagnose heart attacks have yielded mixed results on safety.

Methods compared

In this study, an international team of researchers combined common laboratory blood tests available at many hospitals to create a single laboratory score (clinical chemistry score) to diagnose heart attack.

The lab score was tested on over 4 200 patients in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Germany, and proved highly effective in both men and women.

The researchers used the score as a predictor of heart attack or death within 30 days. In that time frame, 727 heart attacks or deaths occurred. The lab score missed only one of these events compared with up to 25 missed heart attacks/death predicted by the cardiac troponin test, which is a type of protein in the blood whose levels signal damage after a cardiac event.

Dr Peter Kavsak, also of McMaster University, said, “We have developed a simple lab score that is superior to using cardiac troponin alone for the identification of patients at low and high risk for heart attack or death at emergency department presentation.”

Public Health England says about 80% of heart attacks and strokes in people under 75 could be prevented.

If you quit smoking and gain weight, it may seem like you’re trading one set of health problems for another. But a new US study finds you’re still better off in the long run.

Compared with smokers, even the quitters who gained the most weight had at least a 50% lower risk of dying prematurely from heart disease and other causes, the Harvard-led study found.

Better health

The study is impressive in its size and scope and should put to rest any myth that there are prohibitive weight-related health consequences to quitting cigarettes, said Dr William Dietz, a public health expert at George Washington University.

“The paper makes pretty clear that your health improves, even if you gain weight,” said Dietz, who was not involved in the research. “I don’t think we knew that with the assurance that this paper provides.”

The New England Journal of Medicine published the study. The journal also published a Swedish study that found quitting smoking seems to be the best thing diabetics can do to cut their risk of dying prematurely.

Better to quit

The nicotine in cigarettes can suppress appetite and boost metabolism. Many smokers who quit and don’t step up their exercise find they eat more and gain weight – typically less than 4.5 kilograms, but in some cases three times that much.

A lot of weight gain is a cause of the most common form of diabetes. Diabetes can lead to problems including blindness, nerve damage, heart and kidney disease and poor blood flow to the legs and feet.

In the US study, researchers tracked more than 170 000 men and women over roughly 20 years, looking at what they said in health questionnaires given every two years.

The people enrolled in the studies were all health professionals, and did not mirror current smokers in the general population, who are disproportionately low-income, less-educated and more likely to smoke heavily.

The researchers checked which study participants quit smoking and followed whether they gained weight and developed diabetes, heart disease or other conditions.

Reduced risk

Quitters saw their risk of diabetes increase by 22% in the six years after they kicked the habit. An editorial in the journal characterised it as “a mild elevation” in the diabetes risk.

Studies previously showed that people who quit have an elevated risk of developing diabetes, said Dr Qi Sun, one the study’s authors. He is a researcher at the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

But that risk doesn’t endure, and it never leads to a higher premature death rate than what smokers face, he said.

“Regardless of the amount of weight gain, quitters always have a lower risk of dying” prematurely, Sun said.

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