Having COPD can make it hard to breathe as it taxes both the lungs and the heart, but a new study offers a possible solution: Using an air purifier helped patients’ hearts work better. Researchers found that when people with COPD, also known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, consistently used air purifiers, their hearts were better able to adapt their heart rates in response to daily demands, something known as heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is a key measure of overall heart health. In fact, the participants who used air purifiers daily saw a 25% increase in their HRV. Study author Dr. Sarath Raju, an assistant professor of medicine who specializes in lung diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, explained that an increase in HRV is important. “People with poor HRVs are at risk for a number of cardiac problems, such as heart attacks or a worsening of COPD symptoms,” he said. “All of these things increase the odds of someone with COPD being hospitalized, which is of course something we want to avoid.” The study also looked at the role of what scientists call ultrafine particles, tiny pieces of irritants in the air that people breathe. Raju and his colleagues found there was an association between the presence of these particles in a person’s home environment and a negative…  read on >  read on >

Capitalism is thought to bring out the best in workers, but there’s a dark side to tying a person’s everyday efforts to their weekly paycheck. Folks relying on short-term, freelanced office jobs, or jobs where pay is linked to hustle — depending largely on tips, commissions and bonuses — may often suffer poor health related to their financial insecurity, new research has shown. Employees with fluctuating and unpredictable pay tend to have poorer sleep, more stress and miserable physical symptoms that affect their work and home life, said lead researcher Gordon Sayre, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Emlyon Business School in France. Those symptoms grow worse as a person’s finances become more unstable, Sayre said, and the amount of savings they might have on hand seems to provide no solace. “There’s a lot of research looking at how performance-based pay, commission-based pay, piece-rate based pay leads to higher levels of motivation or higher levels of performance. That’s been sort of fairly well-established, and that’s one of the reasons why these pay practices have become popular,” Sayre said. “But there are some costs to these types of pay arrangements, and we need to consider them in addition to the performance benefits they bring,” he added. “They also have these health costs.” Millions of Americans are in jobs where they can’t count on a steady…  read on >  read on >

Both extremely hot and very cold days take their toll on people who have heart disease, particularly those with heart failure. A new multinational analysis of 32 million heart-related deaths over the past 40 years found more occurred on days with severe temperatures, an issue that climate change could make even worse. Although the greatest number of deaths were due to heart failure, extreme weather also led to a rise in stroke; arrhythmia (an irregular heartbeat); and ischemic heart disease (which is caused by narrowed heart arteries). “The decline in cardiovascular death rates since the 1960s is a huge public health success story as cardiologists identified and addressed individual risk factors such as tobacco, physical inactivity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and others,” according to researcher Dr. Barrak Alahmad. He is a fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “The current challenge now is the environment and what climate change might hold for us,” Alahmad said in a news release from the American Heart Association (AHA). Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. To study the impact of temperatures, researchers analyzed data for 32 million heart-related deaths in 27 countries between 1979 and 2019. The investigators compared heart-related deaths on the hottest and the coldest 2.5% of days in 567 cities with those on days when temperatures were…  read on >  read on >

If someone is stricken with a blood cancer or life-threatening clot, they’ll probably fare better if they are white and wealthy, three new studies show. The ongoing impact of patient race and income to medical outcomes was in the spotlight Saturday in New Orleans at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). In one study, a team led by Dr. Matthew Maurer, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., looked at who got enrolled (or didn’t) in clinical trials for new treatments against a blood cancer known as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). It’s the most common form of lymphoma in the United States. According to ASH, existing therapies help cure about 60% of patients, but another 40% may not be helped. So, enrollment in clinical trials can be crucial for some patients. The Mayo study examined data on enrollment in DLBCL trials from eight large academic medical centers across America. It found that 76% of enrollees were white. Results from lab tests were key to getting accepted into the trials, but Black or Hispanic Americans were much less likely to meet those lab-based criteria than were whites, the research showed. That means trial organizers may need to take a closer look at lab-based eligibility criteria to help level the playing field for entry into future clinical trials. “These exclusion criteria are…  read on >  read on >