underwriting

HgbA1c and CVD

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Glycemic Control and Cardiovascular Disease in 7,454 Patients With Type 1 Diabetes — Diabetes Care

CONCLUSIONS This observational study of patients in modern everyday clinical practice demonstrates progressively increasing risks for CHD and CVD with higher A1C, independently of traditional risk factors, with no J-shaped risk curves. A baseline mean A1C of 7.2% showed considerably reduced risks of CHD and CVD compared with A1C 9.0%, emphasizing A1C as a strong independent risk factor in type 1 diabetes.

Insomnia and Mortality Risk

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Medical News: APSS: Insomnia Raises Mortality Risk Threefold – in Meeting Coverage, APSS from MedPage Today

Insomnia should be considered a condition with potentially lethal consequences, not simply a bothersome fact of life that people must live with, a researcher said here.

Among participants in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study, chronic insomnia was associated with a threefold risk of all-cause mortality (HR 2.9, 95% CI 1.4 to 5.8), Laurel Finn, MS, of the University of Wisconsin Madison, and colleagues reported in a poster presentation at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

RA + Interstitial Lung Disease = High Mortality Risk

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Medical News: High Mortality with Lung Disease in RA – in Rheumatology, Arthritis from MedPage Today

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who develop interstitial lung disease face a very high mortality risk, a population-based study found.

The risk of death for RA patients who develop interstitial lung disease was nearly triple compared with patients without pulmonary involvement (HR 2.86, 95% CI 1.98 to 4.12), according to Tim Bongartz, MD, and colleagues from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

And median survival of RA patients after a diagnosis of interstitial lung disease was only 2.6 years, considerably lower than the expected survival of 9.9 years for RA patients of the same age and sex without lung disease (P<0.001), the researchers reported in the June issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism.

You Want Some Asthma With That Burger?

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Medical News: What Kids Eat Is Tied to Asthma Risk – in Allergy & Immunology, Asthma from MedPage Today

Eating a Mediterranean diet — one high in fruits, fish, and vegetables and low in saturated fat — is associated with a reduced likelihood of asthma in children, a large observational study reaffirmed.

Overall, choosing foods increasingly similar to a Mediterranean diet was associated with a lower prevalence of both wheeze and asthma (P=0.03 for both trends), Gabriele Nagel, MD, MPH, of Ulm University in Germany, and colleagues reported in the June issue of Thorax.

In contrast, children who ate burgers at least three times a week had increased odds of having asthma (OR 1.42, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.87).

The medpage Today article goes on to include the following action point for physicians:

Note that these findings, which are consistent with previous studies, do not establish a causal relationship between food choices and the odds of having asthma.

Most of the MSM is focusing on the burger angle.  Be careful what you read.