Watch your waistline
Extra fat around the waist can raise the risk of heart failure - even if a person's overall body mass index, or BMI, is normal, new research shows.
Researchers from Boston and Sweden, led by Emily Levitan of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, studied about 80,000 Swedish men and women over 45 who supplied their height, weight, and waist circumference. After seven years, the researchers counted how many people had been hospitalized for heart failure, a condition causing fatigue and weakness because the heart cannot pump enough blood throughout the body.
Among those with heart failure, about a third of the women and almost half of the men were overweight, and about 10 percent were obese. Higher BMI and higher waist measurements were both associated with higher heart failure rates.
But women who had a BMI rating of 25, which is at the high end of the normal range, and a waist 4 inches bigger than other women in the study, were also seen as having a higher heart failure risk - 15 percent higher. For women whose BMI was 30, the increased heart failure rate climbed to 18 percent.
The results were similar in men.
Other research connecting girth to health has determined that a waist over 35 inches in women, and over 40 inches in men, is considered a risk factor for heart disease.
BOTTOM LINE: Big waistlines, even in people with a normal body mass index, are linked to developing heart failure.
CAUTIONS: The study relied on self-reports of height, weight, and hip and waist size and lacked detailed medical records.
WHERE TO FIND IT: Circulation: Heart Failure, online April 7 Rapid Access Report
ELIZABETH COONEY
Lupus link to birth control pills?
Lupus - or SLE, systemic lupus erythematosus - is an autoimmune disease that affects kidneys, joints, skin, and other body systems. The disease most commonly strikes young women who have already gone through puberty, suggesting a possible estrogen trigger.
Oral contraceptive pills, which contain estrogen and progesterone, have been suspected of increasing risk of lupus, but the data have been conflicting.
In 2005, two studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that birth control pills do not exacerbate the symptoms of lupus in women who already have the disease. But research done as part of the Nurses' Health Study associated the pills with a slight increase in lupus risk.
To probe further, researchers from the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology at Jewish General Hospital of McGill University collected data on more than 1.7 million women ages 18-45 from the UK's General Practice Research Database. Researchers found that nearly 800 young women developed lupus over an eight-year period.
After comparing patterns of oral contraceptive use between women with lupus and healthy women, researchers concluded that oral contraceptives increased the risk of lupus. The association was most significant within the first three months of using first and second generation birth control pills, which have higher doses of estrogen than the third generation of contraceptive pills.
BOTTOM LINE: Using first and second generation oral contraceptive pills is associated with an increased risk of developing lupus.
CAUTIONS: This study is observational; it does not prove that birth control pill use led to lupus. Also, the lead researcher reported a potential conflict of interest with pharmaceutical companies Organon and Schering.
WHERE TO FIND IT: Arthritis and Rheumatism, April 15
SUSHRUT JANGI 