Hitting the Right Stride; Faulty Hearing, Faulty Breathing?; Avandia Gets Over One FDA Hurdle; Two New Options for Women
Hitting the Right Stride
New research on middle-aged people with elevated cholesterol reveals that exercise of different intensities has vastly different effects on blood lipids. More exercise isn't necessarily better, just good in a different way, researchers found.
In the study, previously sedentary, overweight volunteers who sweated off the caloric equivalent of jogging 20 miles a week for six months raised their HDL "good" cholesterol levels and maintained those benefits two weeks after they stopped exercising. Surprisingly, however, people who followed a more moderate program, the equivalent of walking 12 miles a week, lowered their triglyceride levels by about 25 percent—twice as much as the more vigorous group—and they maintained that improvement longer. The report appeared in the August Journal of Applied Physiology.
Cris Slentz, an exercise physiologist at Duke University Medical Center who led the study, says he is baffled by the differences but says they point to the possibility of personalized exercise prescriptions based on which lipids are out of whack. —Nancy Shute
Faulty Hearing, Faulty Breathing?
A simple hearing test may help identify babies at risk for sudden infant death syndrome. Daniel Rubens and colleagues at the Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle analyzed data on 31 babies who died of SIDS. Compared with other babies, those who died scored 4 points lower in certain standard hearing tests for newborns. The study was published in the July issue of Early Human Development.
The inner ear contains tiny hairs involved with hearing and balance. Hair cells may also play a role in transmitting information to the brain about levels of carbon dioxide in the blood, Rubens suggests. Injury to hair cells may disrupt respiratory control and predispose infants to SIDS. —HealthDay
Avandia Gets Over One FDA Hurdle
Is Avandia safe? Not entirely, concluded two Food and Drug Administration advisory committees that met last week to review the GlaxoSmithKline diabetes drug, but it's not risky enough to pull off the market.
The debate seized attention in May when an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine found that patients taking Avandia had a 43 percent higher risk of heart attack—roughly 8 more heart attacks a year for every 1,000 patients—than those on other medications did. The FDA then pushed up a planned fall meeting to review Avandia and Actos, a similar drug, and narrowed the focus to Avandia.
People who are particularly vulnerable include those with congestive heart failure or diagnosed coronary artery disease, those who are older, and those taking insulin. The panel's conclusions suggest that people taking Avandia, especially if they are in these groups, should talk with the physician who put them on the drug. —Avery Comarow
Two New Options for Women
Two new contraceptives hit most major drugstores last week. After being absent for over a decade because of production problems, the Today Sponge is widely available once again, retailing over the counter for $8 to $10 for a pack of three. And Lybrel, the oral contraceptive that stops periods, is now available by prescription. A four-week supply of 28 tablets costs about $57 at CVS and Wal-Mart, similar to the cost of other brands that allow monthly periods.
Inserted into the vagina like a diaphragm, the foam Today Sponge is coated with the spermicide nonoxynol-9 and contains no hormones. While easy to obtain, it has a significant failure rate. The manufacturer's clinical trials found a pregnancy rate of 13 to 16 percent per year in typical users, compared with about 7 percent for users of the pill or the patch.
Lybrel, the first birth control pill approved for continuous use, is being marketed as the pill that ends periods. But while women won't have any scheduled days that they'll bleed each month, they usually have unpredictable spotting and bleeding, especially during the first year of use. —Deborah Kotz
This story appears in the August 13, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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