Friday, August 24, 2012

Later reproduction may extend offspring's life: study

The finding is completely against the current belief - it therefore needs further study and more evidence. But if succeeding tests will yield the same results, there goes another myth... and this is a really, really good one indeed! Read on...
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Posted: 12 June 2012

Researcher looking through microscope
WASHINGTON: The offspring of fathers and grandfathers who reproduced later in life could enjoy life-extending genetic benefits, including being able to father children at an older age, a new study suggests.

Researchers at Northwestern University believe the process represents an unusually rapid evolutionary adaptation in which telomeres -- DNA found at the ends of chromosomes -- lengthen, which is thought to promote healthy aging.

"If your father and grandfather were able to live and reproduce at a later age, this might predict that you yourself live in an environment that is somewhat similar -- an environment with less accidental deaths or in which men are only able to find a partner at later ages," said Dan Eisenberg, lead author of the study.

"In such an environment, investing more in a body capable of reaching these late ages could be an adaptive strategy from an evolutionary perspective."

After analyzing the DNA of 1,779 young adults and their mothers in the Philippines, researchers found that children of older fathers not only inherit longer telomeres, but that the effect is cumulative across generations.

The researchers do not advise men to reproduce at later ages, as other research has shown that doing so raises the risk of passing on genetic mutations that can cause miscarriages or other health problems.

Co-author Christopher Kuzawa said more research would be necessary to see if the longer telomeres inherited from older fathers and grandfathers reduce the health problems and ailments that come with age.

"Based upon our findings, we predict that this will be the case, but this is a question to be addressed in future studies," he said.

The study appeared in the June 11-15 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

- AFP/wm



Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Later reproduction may extend offspring's life: study


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Saturday, February 25, 2012

Grief boosts "heart-attack risk"

There is a reason why "a merry countenance is good to the heart..."

"There is a time for everything...
... a time to laugh, a time to cry..."
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Posted: 10 January 2012


A model of a heart
WASHINGTON: Grief over the death of a loved one can cause a huge spike in a person's risk of heart attack, especially in the early days after the loss, said a US study on Monday.

The research tracked nearly 2,000 adults who survived a heart attack and found that among those who had just lost a loved one, the risk of a heart attack soared 21 times higher than normal in the first day.

The risk rate remained six times higher than normal through the first week, and declined slowly over the course of the first month, said the findings in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Intense grief can cause a host of symptoms that raise heart risks, including higher heart rate, blood pressure, stress hormone levels and blood clotting.

Grieving people are also prone to lose sleep, miss medications and eat less, which can also boost cardiovascular risks.

"Friends and family of bereaved people should provide close support to help prevent such incidents, especially near the beginning of the grieving process," said Elizabeth Mostofsky, lead author of the research.

Previous studies have shown that grieving spouses have a higher risk of dying over the long term, with heart disease and strokes accounting for up to 53 percent of deaths.

The latest study is believed to be the first to examine the short term risk of heart attack after a loved one's death.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and School of Public Health's epidemiology department in Boston, Massachusetts arrived at the estimates by reviewing charts and patient interviews after a heart attack from 1989 to 1994.

Patients answered questions about their personal lives, whether they recently lost someone significant in the past year, when the death happened and the importance of their relationship.

Researchers came up with the relative risk of a heart attack by comparing the number of patients who had someone close to them die in the week before their heart attack to the number of deaths of significant people in their lives from one to six months before their heart attack.

- AFP/wk



Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Grief boosts "heart-attack risk"


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