Yo-yo dieting might hurt heart patients
For people with coronary artery disease, rapidly losing and regaining weight — or ‘‘yo-yo’’ dieting — may increase the risk for deadly heart attacks and strokes, a new study suggests.
Scientists prospectively followed 9,509 men and women with stable coronary artery disease, examining them and recording their weight an average of 12 times over five years. The median body weight variation over the period was 3.8 pounds per visit.
After adjusting for other risk factors, they found that compared with the one-fifth of people with the lowest weight variability, the one-fifth with the highest had a 78 percent higher risk of new onset diabetes, a 117 percent higher risk of heart attack, a 136 percent higher risk of stroke, and a 124 percent higher risk of death. The study, sponsored by Pfizer, is in The New England Journal of Medicine.
‘‘It’s important to lose weight,’’ said the lead author, Dr. Sripal Bangalore, an associate professor of medicine at the
New York University School of Medicine, ‘‘but this data says you have to keep it off. Many times people are motivated until they lose the weight, and then they feel they can take it easy. Maybe this information can be used as motivation to keep the weight off.’’
Take whooping cough vaccine while pregnant
Pregnant women should be sure to get the tetanusdiphtheria-pertussis (Tdap) vaccine during pregnancy, because it is highly effective in protecting newborns against pertussis (whooping cough) in the first two months of life, a new study found.
Infants can receive a version of the vaccine when they are 2 months old, but until then they are unprotected against whooping cough.
Researchers followed 148,981 babies born to mothers in a large healthmaintenance organization in California between 2010 and 2015 until they were 1 year old. About a quarter of the mothers were unvaccinated when their babies were born.
Of the 103 cases of whooping cough in infants that were reported after one year, 80 were in babies of mothers unvaccinated during pregnancy. The observational study is in the journal Pediatrics.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that all pregnant women receive the Tdap vaccine; it is more than 90 percent effective in protecting infants in the first two months of life. Nationwide in 2015, less than half of pregnant women had received it.
The senior author of the study, Dr. Nicola P. Klein, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, said that ‘‘every woman should receive the Tdap during every pregnancy. Whooping cough is a potentially deadly disease, and this vaccine protects your baby.’’
Heart disease a risk even at healthy body mass index
People, especially minorities, who are at a ‘‘healthy’’ weight may still be at increased risk for diabetes and heart disease, a new study reports.
Researchers gathered data on 7,617 white, ChineseAmerican, African-American, South Asian and Latino Americans ages 45 to 84. In addition to tracking body mass index, physical activity and other demographic and behavioral characteristics, they assessed four risk factors for cardiovascular disease: LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure and glucose tolerance.
They found that compared with whites of normal weight, South Asians of normal weight were twice as likely to have abnormal readings in two or more of these risk factors. Normal weight Chinese-Americans were 53 percent more likely to have abnormal readings, AfricanAmericans 48 percent more likely, and Latinos 83 percent more likely.
The differences were independent of age, gender, educational level, exercise and smoking.
‘‘Race is a factor in the risk for heart disease, even at normal weight,’’ said the lead author, Unjali P. Gujral, a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University. ‘‘A heart-healthy diet and lots of exercise is important regardless of weight.’’
The study, in Annals of Internal Medicine, found that to have the same number of abnormalities as a white person with a BMI of 25, an African-American would have to have a BMI of 22.9, a Latino 21.5, a Chinese-American 20.9 and a South Asian 19.6.