Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:
Low Levels of Income, Education Increase Women’s Diabetes Risk: Study
Poverty and low levels of education appear to be associated with increased risk for type 2 diabetes in women, a new study released Wednesday by Statistics Canada reports.
The two factors are independent of other diabetes risk factors, including the well-documented connection between being overweight/obese and diabetes, CBC News reported.
Lower-income women were much more likely to develop diabetes than those in high-income households. But household income didn’t appear to influence diabetes risk in men. Their main risk factors were being overweight/obese and behaviors such as smoking, heavy drinking and physical inactivity.
The 15-year study included 12,333 participants, aged 18 and older, in the National Population Health Survey. Among those who were diabetes-free in 1994-95, 7.2 percent of men and 6.3 percent of women had either developed diabetes or died of the disease by 2008-09, CBC News reported.
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Possible Link Between Athletes’ Head Injuries and Lou Gehrig’s Disease: Study
There appears to be a connection between head injuries in athletes and Lou Gehrig’s disease, according to a new study.
Boston University neurology professor Dr. Ann McKee found toxic proteins in the spinal cords of three athletes who suffered head injuries during their careers and later died of Lou Gehrig’s disease, also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the Associated Press reported.
The same toxic proteins have been found in the brains of athletes with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). This condition is associated with head injuries and patients experience abnormal behavior, cognitive decline and dementia.
McKee launched her study after noticing that ALS appears to affect an unusually high number of football players. People with ALS lose the ability to move and speak as the disease attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.
She analyzed the brains and spinal cords of former Minnesota Vikings linebacker Wally Hilgenberg, former Southern California linebacker Eric Scoggins, and an unnamed boxer, the AP reported. All of them died of ALS.
The spines of all three athletes contained the toxic proteins. But these proteins were not present in the spines of athletes who had CTE but not ALS, nor in non-athletes who died of ALS.
The study appears in the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology.
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Lily Halts Development of Alzheimer’s Drug
The development of an experimental Alzheimer’s drug called semagacestat has been halted because it actually worsened the condition of patients in two late-stage studies, Eli Lilly and Company said Tuesday.
The company said the drug did not slow the progression of Alzheimer’s and was associated with a decline in patients’ cognition and ability to carry out day-to-day tasks, The New York Times reported.
In addition, patients taking the drug were at increased risk for skin cancer, the newspaper said.
Semagacestat was designed to reduce the production of brain plaques believed to be involved in Alzheimer’s disease.
This failure and previous ones involving other experimental Alzheimer’s drugs could raise doubts about the leading theory that Alzheimer’s is caused by the accumulation of amyloid beta plaques in the brain, the Times reported.
Development of another experimental Alzheimer’s drug called solanezumab will continue, Lilly said. That drug, which is in late-stage testing, also targets amyloid beta but does so through a different mechanism than semagacestat.
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Cancer a Major Economic Issue: Report
Cancer not only is the leading cause of death worldwide but it has a huge economic impact, according to an American Cancer Society report.
The amount of life and productivity lost due to cancer is greater than AIDS, malaria, the flu and other infectious diseases, the Associated Press reported.
In 2008, cancer’s economic toll was $895 billion – which is equal to 1.5 percent of the global gross domestic product. That figure represents the cost of disability and years of life cost, but doesn’t include treatment costs, the American Cancer Society said.
The document was to be presented this week at a global cancer conference in China, the AP reported.