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Younger Black Americans face particularly high risks of developing high blood pressure. However, new research finds that when your peers are coaching you to get healthy, it’s more likely you’ll see your numbers improve. The study of nearly 1,600 Black patients living in the southeastern United States found that having a peer coach help manage blood pressure worked even better than standard, doctor-centered care. A lot of the improvement was due to folks simply remembering to take their blood pressure meds. “We were not surprised to see this greater benefit in younger patients,” said first author and study lead Dr. Monika Safford. “We know this is a population that has more room for improvement, because they are less likely to take their medications regularly.” Safford is chief of general internal medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, in New York City. The study group consisted of Black Americans averaging 58 years of age, treated at rural health centers in Alabama and North Carolina. All had uncontrolled high blood pressure at the start of the study, which ran from 2016 through 2021. Folks either received “usual care” for their hypertension (patients were educated about blood pressure and given a monitor to use at home), or they got usual care enhanced with peer coaches — non-clinicians who were trained to give participants information, support… read on > read on >

— Boys who drink lots of sugary soda and fruit juice could be more likely to develop type 2 diabetes later in life, a new study has found. Each daily 8-ounce serving of sugary drinks during a boy’s childhood is associated with a 34% increase in insulin resistance by the time they are teens, researchers found. Sugary drinks and fruit juices also were associated with increases in blood sugar levels, results show. “While these findings are preliminary, they support the existing evidence about the potential relationship between beverages with added sugar and long-term risk of Type 2 diabetes in children,” lead researcher Soren Harnois-Leblanc, a registered dietitian and postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School, said in a news release. For the study, researchers tracked the health of almost 500 Massachusetts children taking part in an ongoing long-term study of women and their children. As part of the study, dietary records were kept on the childen. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. kids and teens consume at least one sugary drink – soda, lemonade, energy drinks and the like – every day, according to the American Heart Association. Eating too many foods with added sugars raises a person’s risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and tooth decay, researchers said. For the new study, researchers estimated how much sugary drinks and fruit juices kids… read on > read on >

Over the first few years of a child’s life, foods found in a family’s fridge and cupboards tends to get less healthy, new research shows. “We found significant changes in several food categories over time,” said study lead author Jennifer Barton. “Food items such as non-whole grains, processed meats, savory snacks, candy and microwavable or quick-cook foods were more commonly available in the home at 48 months [of age] compared to 24 and 36 months.” The study, which tracked foods in the homes of 468 mother-child pairs in Illinois, was published recently in the journal Public Health Nutrition. Barton is an assistant research professor at Pennsylvania State University, but she conducted the research while at the University of Illinois’ College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, in Urbana. According to Barton, “it’s important to understand how the environments that children are in can influence their diet and nutrition. What types of foods and beverages are available in the home, and how accessible are those items for the young child? “ Tracking the availability of various foods in the homes of the study participants, Barton’s group used a standard checklist called the Home Food Inventory to see what kids could access at 2, 3 and 4 years of age. All of the participants were taking part in an ongoing UI research project tracking the nutrition of children… read on > read on >

Millions of Americans whose livers develop scar tissue due to a common disease now have the first approved drug, Rezdiffra, to treat the condition, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday. The condition is called non-cirrhotic non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). NASH with liver scarring is thought to affect up to 8 million Americans. It’s often tied to high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes, the FDA explained in a statement. “Previously, patients with NASH who also have notable liver scarring did not have a medication that could directly address their liver damage,” said Dr. Nikolay Nikolov, acting director of the Office of Immunology and Inflammation in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “Today’s approval of Rezdiffra will, for the first time, provide a treatment option for these patients, in addition to diet and exercise,” Nokolov said in the FDA statement. The liver is a vital organ that cleanses the blood and helps with digestion by secreting bile. However, over time, inflammation caused by obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure can cause nonalcoholic liver disease, which triggers fat accumulation in the liver, liver scarring and dysfunction. As the FDA explained, “Rezdiffra is a partial activator of a thyroid hormone receptor; activation of this receptor by Rezdiffra in the liver reduces liver fat accumulation.” The agency said that the drug was approved under an “accelerated”… read on > read on >

Scientists have long noticed that folks who eat healthy have healthier brains as they age, including lowered odds for dementia. Now, researchers believe they know why: Regimens like the heart-healthy Mediterranean or DASH diets appear to slow biological aging, helping to protect the brain. “Our findings suggest that slower pace of aging mediates part of the relationship of healthy diet with reduced dementia risk,” said study first author Aline Thomas. She’s a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University’s Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain, in New York City. The findings were published recently in the Annals of Neurology. In the study, Thomas and her colleagues examined decades of data from the ongoing Framingham Heart Study, which began in 1971. The researchers honed in on over 1,600 people in the second generation of the study, which had people check in every four to seven years with data on (among other things) their diets and the results of neuro-cognitive tests. A total of 160 of the participants went on to develop dementia. “Much attention to nutrition in dementia research focuses on the way specific nutrients affect the brain,” said study senior author Daniel Belsky, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Columbia School of Public Health and the Columbia Aging Center. “We tested the hypothesis that healthy diet protects against dementia by slowing… read on > read on >

Following disappointing trial results, the maker of a controversial ALS drug may pull the medication off the market. In a statement issued Friday, Amylyx Pharmaceuticals said that Relyvrio failed to help patients in a large follow-up study, but the company stopped just short of saying it will definitely pull the drug from the market. The drug is sold as Albrioza in Canada. “Amylyx intends to share plans for Relyvrio/Albrioza in ALS, which may include voluntarily withdrawing Relyvrio/Albrioza from the market,” the company said in its statement. “At this time, Relyvrio/Albrioza and its related patient support program will continue to be available for people living with ALS. Amylyx has voluntarily decided to pause promotion of the medication during this time.” Executives added that they were “surprised and disappointed” by the results and would announce their plans for the drug in the next two months. Relyvrio was first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in September 2022, following a lengthy, impassioned campaign by patients with ALS, a fatal muscle-wasting disease. Unfortunately, the latest company study showed the drug did not slow the disease compared with a placebo treatment, and it also did not produce improvements on any secondary measures, such as muscle strength. ALS is a devastating neurological disease slowly destroys nerve cells and connections that are needed to walk, talk, speak and breathe. Most patients die… read on > read on >

Instead of approving the new Alzheimer’s drug donanemab this month, as was expected, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will now require the experimental medication be scrutinized more closely by an expert panel, the drug’s maker said Friday. “The FDA has informed Lilly it wants to further understand topics related to evaluating the safety and efficacy of donanemab, including the safety results in donanemab-treated patients and the efficacy implications of the unique trial design,” the company said in a statement. The move surprised the company, which had believed the agency would give its blessing to the drug during the first quarter of this year. “We were not expecting this,” Anne White, a Lilly executive vice president and president of its neuroscience division, told the Times. While independent FDA advisory committees are often called upon when the agency has questions about drugs, it was unusual to do so “at the end of the review cycle and beyond the action date that the FDA had given us,” White noted. While the FDA did not comment on the news, Lilly officials said they expected it would be a few months before the appropriate advisory committee meets to weigh the benefits of the drug, the Times reported. “The FDA did commit to us to move quickly, so we would hope that they would then take action shortly after the… read on > read on >

Folks worried about becoming flabby in middle age should check out what their parents looked like when they were that age, a new study says. People are six times more likely to become obese in middle age if both their parents were chubby during that time of their lives, according to research to be presented at the European Congress on Obesity in May. Further, having just one obese parent more than triples a person’s odds of middle-aged obesity, researchers found. These findings demonstrate that the established association between childhood obesity and parental weight doesn’t fade as a kid ages, said lead researcher Mari Mikkelsen, a doctoral research fellow of community medicine at the Arctic University of Norway. “Obesity in childhood, and especially in adolescence, tends to follow the individual into early adulthood, and so we suspected it would also follow them into middle age,” Mikkelsen said in a meeting news release. “We found that this is indeed the case — children whose parents lived with obesity are much more likely to be in living with obesity themselves when they are in their 40s and 50s, long after they have left home,” Mikkelsen added. For this study, researchers analyzed health data on more than 2,000 parent-offspring pairs who took both took part in an ongoing health research project called the Tromso Study. All the offspring were… read on > read on >

Children with “lazy eye” are more likely to become adults facing an array of serious health problems, a new study warns. Kids diagnosed with amblyopia are more likely to develop high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes as adults, researchers found. They also face an increased risk of heart attack, according to findings published March 7 in the journal eClinicalMedicine. “Vision and the eyes are sentinels for overall health,” said lead author Dr. Siegfried Wagner, a senior research fellow with the University College London Institute of Ophthalmology. “They are intimately linked with other organ systems. This is one of the reasons why we screen for good vision in both eyes.” Amblyopia occurs when vision in one eye doesn’t develop properly. As the brain ignores the weaker eye, that eye drifts out of position and tends to face slightly away from wherever a person is looking. As many as four in every 100 children have lazy eye, researchers said in background notes. It’s the most common vision condition in children. For this study, researcher analyzed data from more than 126,000 people ages 40 to 69 participating in the ongoing UK Biobank study. As part of their medical history, participants were asked whether they were treated for amblyopia in childhood, and whether they still had the condition in adulthood. They also were asked if they had been diagnosed with… read on > read on >

Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata: Millions of bleary-eyed Americans turn to this class of so-called “Z-drugs” to get restful sleep. But how do these drugs work, and do they come with risks? Experts at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have issued an advisory to boost awareness about the meds. All of these medications — generically known as zolpidem (Ambien, Ambien CR, Edluar and Zolpimist), eszopiclone (Lunesta) and zaleplon (Sonata) — work by putting the brakes on brain activity, allowing you to drift off to sleep. But the FDA warns that Z drugs also come with risks, most notably upping your odds for “complex sleep behaviors” — things like sleepwalking, sleep driving, sleep cooking or even taking other medicines. “The FDA has received reports of people taking these insomnia medicines and accidentally overdosing, falling, being burned, shooting themselves and wandering outside in extremely cold weather, among other incidents,” the agency noted. You might not even recall any of these behaviors occurring once you reawaken, according to the FDA. The onset of complex sleep behaviors tied to Z drug use is also unpredictable. For some, the behavior can begin after the first dose, while for others it might begin much later into use. Many sleep medicines can also cause daytime drowsiness, so avoid driving and other hazardous tasks under those circumstances. Some other tips for safe use of… read on > read on >