People with more education have reduced heart disease, says study

Increasing the years of childhood education may reduce the risk for heart disease in adulthood, a study has found.

Researchers have found that people with more education may have reduced heart disease because they have higher incomes, allowing them to afford better food and health care.

The study suggested that state policies requiring children to attend additional years of school may result in improvements in several cardiovascular risk factors in adulthood.

About the research by UC San Franciso researchers

The researchers in the US conducted a natural experiment by evaluating state compulsory schooling laws, which legislate the number of years children must attend school.

From two large, national surveys conducted from 1971 to 2012, they identified more than 75,000 people born from 1900 to 1950, when states required children to attend school between 0 and 12 years.

They then used US Census data on a group of similar individuals to predict the number of years of required schooling for each individual, based on their year and state of birth.

Overall, about a third of the study participants did not graduate from high school. While 34.5 percent reported heart disease, the researchers found that each year of additional compulsory schooling through high school was associated with a 2.5 percent reduction in occurrence.

They also noted improvements in several cardiovascular risk factors with each additional year, including reductions of more than 3 percent in smoking and nearly five percent in depression.

"For clinicians and health systems struggling to address disparities in heart disease between the rich and the poor, our findings suggest that cross-sectoral interventions to address social factors like education are important," said Rita Hamad, the lead author of the study.

"As a society, we should be thinking about investing in social policies to improve overall health and reduce health care costs," she said.

The 2019 guidelines have suggested using patients' social factors in clinical prediction tools for heart disease, since education is often a stronger predictor than traditional biomedical risk factors like cholesterol and diabetes.

The US Department of Health and Human Services also has proposed that patients' educational attainment be used as an input in determining physician payments for performance, to encourage physicians to care for more disadvantaged patients. The Prof. said this type of data could inform those efforts.

While more education also was associated with improved high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or "good" cholesterol, the researchers found that more education also was associated with higher body-mass index (BMI) and total cholesterol.

A possible explanation is that high-income people born between 1900-1950 tended to eat richer diets, they said. By contrast, higher BMI today tends to be associated more with low income, due to the inability to afford healthy food.

"Overall, people with more education may have reduced heart disease because they have higher incomes, allowing them to afford better food and health care. Or, it may be that they have more resources and therefore less stress, which has been previously linked with heart disease," he said.

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Oral infections in childhood may increase risk of cardiovascular diseases in adulthood

A new study has suggested that common oral infection in childhood is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis in adulthood. Atherosclerosis is a disease of the arteries characterised by the deposition of fatty material on their inner walls.

"The observation is novel since there are no earlier follow-up studies on childhood oral infections and the risk of cardiovascular diseases," said the researcher. More progressed oral infections and inflammations are known to be associated with several cardiovascular risk factors and disease risk in adults according to the details published.

Periodontitis in particular has been studied extensively, and currently, it is considered an independent risk factor for atherosclerotic vascular diseases. The treatment of periodontitis is also known to decrease cardiovascular risk factors.

The study was initiated in 1980 when clinical oral examinations were conducted. Cardiovascular risk factors were measured at several times. Cumulative exposure to the risk factor was calculated in both childhood and adulthood.

The signs of oral infections and inflammation collected in the study included caries, fillings, bleeding on probing, and probing pocket depth. There were no differences between the boys and the girls.

Thickening of the carotid artery wall indicates the progression of atherosclerosis and an increased risk for myocardial or cerebral infarction.

The researchers emphasise, in conclusion, "Oral infections were an independent risk factor for sub-clinical atherosclerosis, and their association with cardiovascular risk factors persevered through the entire follow-up. Prevention and treatment of oral infections are important already in childhood."

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How baby stroke survivors' brains adapt

A study of children who had strokes as babies has found they adapted to use a different part of their brain for language.

Imaging revealed language was based in the exact mirror opposite region to the normal left side area. 
Some researchers hope their work will help the rehabilitation of adult stroke patients. 
An expert said the brain had an "incredible ability" to make up for what was lost in a stroke.
It's estimated that one in 4,000 babies are affected shortly before, during or after birth by a stroke.
The plasticity of babies' developing brains makes them better able to recover from a stroke than adults. 

The research,  looked at 12 perinatal stroke survivors aged 12-25.The case studies had few indicators that they had experienced a stroke - one had a limp and many had learned to make their left hands dominant because of the stroke damaging the right hand's function - but all had developed good language skills. 

However they found that, because their brains were developing when they had the strokes, they were able to adapt. 




"We believe there are very important constraints to where functions can be relocated. There are very specific regions that take over when part of the brain is injured, depending on the particular function. 

Strokes in babies

• A stroke happens when the blood supply to part of the brain is cut off.
• There are over 400 childhood strokes a year in the UK - around a quarter of these are in children under a year old.
• Babies are vulnerable due to stress on the brain during childbirth and the change in blood circulation from the mother to baby.
• Stroke in babies during pregnancy to 28 days after birth are known as pre- and perinatal ischemic stroke.
• They are usually caused by clots breaking off from the placenta and lodging in the child's brain, or because of a blood-clotting disorder that the mother or baby may have.
• Strokes in the first few weeks of life are often missed and only picked up on when a child doesn't seem to be developing as expected, or is displaying a weakness down one side.
• Some children, especially newborn infants, may not show any symptoms. In babies up to 28 days old, seizures are a common symptom of stroke.

This was a small study, said a researcher, but  he added: "We do know that the brain can have an incredible ability to reorganise undamaged cells after a stroke, and make up for what has been lost.
"In many cases, with the right support, stroke survivors of any age are able to walk, talk and live independently again. 

"But there is much more research that needs to be done to help us fully understand how the brain can recover after a stroke."
 

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Children who are fit during childhood have better functioning lungs in adulthood

Turns out, children who are fit during childhood and adolescence have better functioning lungs in adulthood. A new study has revealed that fitness in childhood is linked to healthy lungs in adulthood. Good lung function in early adult life is believed to lower the risk of developing chronic lung disease later in life. Chronic lung diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), are a leading cause of global ill health. Notably, with an ageing population, this is projected to get worse. The new study provided early evidence that keeping children fit could help reduce the burden of lung disease in the future.


The researcher explained, “We know very little about the links between physical activity, fitness, and lung growth. This is a difficult topic to research because following children over many years is expensive and time-consuming”. “This study shows that children who are physically fit go on to have better lung function as young adults. We think that this could reduce the risk of them developing chronic lung diseases as they get older,” he continued. The research was conducted on a total of 2,406 children, combining a study of 1,037 children in one country, and the second group of 1,369 in another country. The Study used a cycling test at ages 15, 26, 32, and 38 to estimate fitness from the heart rate response to exercise. In the group, aerobic fitness was tested at ages 9, 15, 21, and 29 using an exercise bike to see how much work-out each person could do before they were exhausted. Lung function tests were done at the same ages in both the studies. The link between lung function and fitness remained after the researchers took account of factors such as height, weight, asthma, and smoking. The results also showed a stronger effect in boys than girls. The Professor explained, “We don’t know why fitness and lung function are linked but one explanation could be that fitter people have better respiratory muscle strength as well as other muscle strength”. The two studies are ongoing and researchers hope to collect data on fitness and lung function as the participants get older. This will allow them to see if the effect of childhood fitness on lung function persists and whether fitness can indeed protect against lung disease. 

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Poor sleep in childhood may lead to cancer in adulthood

Is your child having a tough time sleeping properly? You may need to keep a check on his/her body mass index (BMI) as a new research suggests that there is a co-relation between the two and can lead to cancer in adulthood. "Childhood obesity" very often leads to adult obesity. This puts them at greater risk of developing obesity-related cancers in adulthood,” said study lead author. For the study, researchers enrolled 120 children, with an average age of eight, whose mothers had participated in the  Study both pre-birth and during early childhood. To track the sleep-wake cycle, the children wore accelerometers continuously for 24 hours a day for a period of at least five days. They found that shorter sleep duration, measured in hours, was associated with a higher BMI z-score (body mass index adjusted for age and sex).

Each additional hour of sleep was associated with a .13 decrease in BMI z-score and with a 1.29 cm decrease in waist circumference. More fragmented rest-activity rhythms and increased intra-daily variability — a measure of the frequency and extent of transitions between sleep and activity — were also associated with greater waist circumferences. The study results, indicate that while sleep duration is important, examining markers of sleep quality may also be useful in designing childhood obesity prevention strategies. “Today, many children are not getting enough sleep. There are a number of distractions, such as screens in the bedroom, that contribute to interrupt leading to a fragmented sleep. This, perpetuated over time, can be a risk factor for obesity,” the author said.

“Because of the strong links between obesity and many types of cancer, childhood obesity prevention is cancer prevention.”

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