Short course

Surgery ought to be considered front line therapy for diabetes among obese people, said Dr Jon Gould,who heads the weight loss surgery programme at the University of Wisconsin and was not involved in the review. The researchers combed through the data of nine studies of diabetics who had either gastric bypass or another form of weight loss surgery called gastric banding. In gastric bypass,food is diverted around the stomach into a small pouch,reducing the amount of food a person can eat and hindering its absorption. Gastric banding slips a ring over the top of the stomach to limit how much a person eats. Eight of the nine studies included between 23 and 177 patients,while one study tracked the outcomes of 82,000 patients. Each study followed the patients for at least 12 months after their weight loss surgery. Among diabetics who had gastric bypass,83 per cent wound up free of diabetes medications,some within days of the procedure. After gastric banding,62 per cent could stop.

Too much alcohol linked to pneumonia risk

Heavy drinkers more often end up in the hospital with pneumonia than those who go easy on the alcohol,suggests a new study from Denmark. But it was only the biggest imbibers men who said they had more than 50 drinks a week who were at higher risk of catching the infection.

In the report,Dr. Reimar Wernich Thomsen,of Aarhus University Hospital,and his colleagues used data from a Danish health study,including more than 45,000 people age 50 to 64,who had never had pneumonia. Women among them reported having an average of six drinks each week,while men said they had 12 drinks per week. Over the next 12 years,about 4 % of the participants were in hospital with pneumonia. Regardless of how much they said they drank from zero to over 35 drinks each week women had a similar risk of pneumonia,the researchers report in the European Respiratory Journal.

Smoking in pregnancy tied to child’s cholesterol

Mothers who smoke while pregnant might be causing changes to their unborn babies that can lead them to have less of a type of cholesterol known to protect against heart disease,scientists have said. In a study in the European Heart Journal,Australian researchers found that by the age of eight,children born to mothers who smoked in pregnancy had lower levels of High-density lipoprotein (HDL ) cholesterol,at around 1.3 millimoles per liter (mmol/L),than those born to mothers who hadnt smoked,with about 1.5 mmol/L. Our results suggest that maternal smoking ‘imprints’ an unhealthy set of characteristics on children while they are developing in the womb,which may well predispose them to later heart attack and stroke,” said David Celermajer,a professor of cardiology at the University of Sydney. “This imprinting seems to last for at least eight years and probably a lot longer,” he said,adding that the heart disease risk for smokers’ children could be 10 to 15 per cent higher.

More evidence air pollution may be a heart risk

Day-to-day spikes in air pollution seem to be followed by an uptick in hospital admissions for heart attack,a study in Italy finds. The study,reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology,add to evidence that high-pollution days may trigger heart attacks in some people. And,like other studies,the new one suggests that the elderly and people with existing heart or lung disease are most vulnerable. The evidence of harm is strongest against pollutants known as fine particulate matter. Fine particulate matter is released into the air when wood or fossil fuels are burned,so car exhaust,home heating and industrial sources all contribute. For the study,researchers led by Dr. Alessandro Barchielli,of the Regional Health Service of Tuscany,looked at data on 11,450 hospitalizations for heart attack between 2002 and 2005. Overall,the study found that for each fine-particle increase of 10 micrograms per cubic meter of air,heart attack hospitalizations inched up 0.01% over the next two days.