Read books, live longer?
Reading books is tied to a longer life, according to a new report.
Researchers used data on 3,635 people over 50 participating in a larger health study who had answered questions about reading.
The scientists divided the sample into three groups: those who read no books, those who read books up to 3 1/2 hours a week, and those who read books more than 3 1/2 hours.
The study, in Social Science & Medicine, found that book readers tended to be female, college-educated and in higher income groups. So researchers controlled for those factors as well as age, race, self-reported health, depression, employment and marital status.
Compared with those who did not read books, those who read for up to 3 1/2 hours a week were 17 percent less likely to die over 12 years of follow-up, and those who read more than that were 23 percent less likely to die. Book readers lived an average of almost two years longer than those who did not read at all.
They found a similar, but weaker, association among those who read newspapers and periodicals.
“People who report as little as a half-hour a day of book reading had a significant survival advantage over those who did not read,” said the senior author, Becca R. Levy, a professor of epidemiology at Yale.
Weight has greater impact on diabetes than heart disease
Carrying excess weight may have a greater impact on the risk for diabetes than it does on the risk for heart disease or early death, a new study has found.
To look at the effect of obesity independent of genetics, Swedish researchers followed 4,046 pairs of identical twins whose average age was 58. One of the twins was overweight, and the other was not. Since identical twins have the same genes, their weight difference could not be attributed to genetics. The study is in JAMA Internal Medicine.
After accounting for physical activity, smoking and educational level, the researchers found that having a higher body mass index, or BMI — even among those in the obese range of 30 or higher — was not associated with an increased risk for heart attack or death. But a high BMI was associated with an increased risk for diabetes.
“Based on these results, the association between obesity and cardiovascular disease is explained by genetic, not environmental, factors,” said the lead author, Peter Nordstrom, a professor of geriatric medicine at Umea University. “Unfortunately, this also means that environmental factors that reduce obesity do not reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease or death. But they most certainly decrease the risk for diabetes.”
Arthritis drug may have benefits against Alzheimer’s
A drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis may have benefits against Alzheimer’s disease, researchers report.
Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease believed to be driven in part by tumor necrosis factor, or TNF, a protein that promotes inflammation. Drugs that block TNF, including an injectable drug called etanercept, have been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis for many years.
TNF is also elevated in the cerebrospinal fluid of Alzheimer’s patients.
Researchers identified 41,109 men and women with a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis and 325 with both rheumatoid arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease. In people over 65, the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease was more than twice as high in people with rheumatoid arthritis as in those without it. The study is in CNS Drugs.
But unlike patients treated with five other rheumatoid arthritis drugs, those who had been treated with etanercept showed a significantly reduced risk for Alzheimer’s disease.
Still, the lead author, Dr. Richard C. Chou, an assistant professor of medicine at Dartmouth, said that it is too early to think of using etanercept as a treatment for Alzheimer’s.
“We’ve identified a process in the brain, and if you can control this process with etanercept, you may be able to control Alzheimer’s,” he said. “But we need clinical trials to prove and confirm it.”