Yearly Archives: 2019


Warnings Added to Common Sleep Pills

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is requiring a Boxed Warning, the most prominent warning, to be added to certain common prescription insomnia medicines because of sleep behaviors, including sleepwalking, sleep driving, and engaging in other activities while not fully awake. These complex sleep behaviors have also resulted in deaths. […]


Exercise Reduced Sitting Linked Mortality

A longitudinal analysis in Australia revealed that sitting is associated with all-cause and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality risk among sedentary adults; moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) doses equivalent to meeting the current recommendations attenuate or effectively eliminate such associations. During an 8.9-year (median) follow-up, a total of 8,689 deaths (1,644 due […]


Skipping Breakfast Linked to Mortality

A US prospective cohort study revealed that skipping breakfast was associated with a significantly increased risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease (CVD). The study included a nationally representative sample of 6,550 adults (mean age 53.2 years; 48.0% male) from 1988 to 1994, with 17 to 23 years of follow-up. In […]


Poor Diet a Major Contributor to Mortality and Morbidity

A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 found that suboptimal diet is responsible for more deaths than any other risks and that improvement of diet could potentially prevent one in every five deaths globally. By use of a comparative risk assessment approach and disease-specific population attributable […]


Alcohol Consumption Increases BP and Stroke Risk

A Chinese genetic epidemiological analyses revealed that alcohol intake uniformly increases blood pressure (BP) and stroke, indicating that the apparently protective effects of moderate alcohol intake against stroke suggested by conventional epidemiological analyses are largely non-causal. The study enrolled 512 715 adults between June 25, 2004, and July 15, 2008, from […]


Replacing Sitting with Physical Activity Linked to Longevity

A prospective US cohort study showed that replacement of 30 minutes/day of sitting with light physical activity (LPA) or moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) was associated with lower mortality riskamong less active adults. The study included 37,924 men and 54,617 women, of which 14,415 men and 13,358 women died […]


Dietary Cholesterol or Egg Linked to CVD and Mortality

An analysis of pooled individual participant data collected between March 25, 1985, and August 31, 2016 revealed that higher consumption of dietary cholesterol or eggs was significantly associated with higher risk of incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all-cause mortality in a dose-response manner. The analysis included 29 615 participants (mean age […]


Testosterone Linked to CVD

A Mendelian randomization study revealed that genetically predicted endogenous testosterone is positively linked to cardiovascular disease (CVD), including thromboembolism, heart failure (HF), and myocardial infarction (MI) in men. The study identified genetic predictors of endogenous testosterone from a genome wide association study of serum testosterone conducted in 3225 men of […]


Effect Heterogeneity in Intensive BP Control

A secondary analysis of data from a US randomized clinical trial suggests that smokers with high blood pressure (BP) may have a higher rate of cardiovascular events associated with intensive BP control. Of 9361 participants in the trial, 466 were current smokers with systolic BP > 144 mm Hg at […]


Salt Intake Reference Updated

A new US National Academies report updated Dietary Reference Intakes for potassium (Adequate Intake [AI] 3400 mg for man and 2600 mg for most women per day) and sodium (AI 1500 mg/day, and Chronic Risk Reduction Intake 2300 mg/day) in healthy adults. There was insufficient evidence of risk of excess […]