Niacin, Statins And Difficulties Of Drug Discovery

John LaMattina, Contributor

Former president of Pfizer Global Research covering news in pharma.

About a dozen years ago, a team of Merck scientists met with upper management to discuss a new approach for treating cardiovascular disease. The approach was simple, but clever. The scientists had a way of turning a well known and widely used drug, niacin, into an even better and safer drug, thereby expanding its usage.

Niacin, also known as vitamin B3, is known to raise HDL (“good cholesterol”) by about 25% as well as modestly lower LDL (“bad cholesterol”) and triglycerides. It had been used for decades to help patients control their blood lipid levels based on results from a trial done in the 1960s known as the Coronary Drug Project, which looked at niacin versus placebo in men who had a previous heart attack over a period of five years. While niacin showed no difference from placebo in the death rate of the men in this study, fewer patients on niacin had a non-fatal heart attack or stroke, by 26% and 24%, respectively. This study provides the basis for the use of niacin in cardiovascular disease.

Men who drink sugary drinks daily up risk of heart disease: study

AFP Relax

A new study has found that men who drink about a can of full-calorie soda or sugar-sweetened juice a day could be increasing their risk of developing heart disease by about 20 percent.

Published in the journal Circulation, Harvard researchers followed 42,880 men over 22 years, measuring the different lipids and proteins in the participants' bloodstream.

After controlling for risk factors like smoking, physical inactivity, alcohol consumption and family medical history, scientists found that those who consumed sugary beverages on a daily basis had higher levels of triglycerides -- or bad fat -- and lower levels of good cholesterol or HDL levels compared to men who refrained from sugary drinks.

Both biomarkers are known to be associated with a higher risk of heart disease.

"This study adds to the growing evidence that sugary beverages are detrimental to cardiovascular health," said lead author Frank Hu. "Certainly, it provides strong justification for reducing sugarybeverage consumption among patients, and more importantly, in the general population."

The role of artificially sweetened beverages, meanwhile, is unclear.

Beginning in 1986, participants were asked to fill out questionnaires about their diet and health habits every two years until 2008. The men also provided a blood sample midway through the project.

It's the latest study to find an association between the consumption of sugary drinks and the increased risk of heart disease and other chronic illnesses.

Last year, the American Heart Association also warned that women who drink more than two sugar-sweetened drinks a day may also up the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Another US study estimated that imposing a soda tax could prevent 100,000 cases of heart disease, 8,000 strokes and prevent 26,000 deaths a year.

Meanwhile, in response to charges that caramel coloring in soda is an animal carcinogen, both Coca-Cola and Pepsi said last week they will lower levels of the chemical 4-MEI to comply with recently imposed California requirements.

The southwestern state has a 29-microgram benchmark for 4-MEI in products. Anything that may expose consumers to a daily level higher than that must carry a warning label.

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/men-drink-sugary-drinks-daily-risk-heart-disease-152503409.html

Red meat boosts risk of dying young: study

 

WASHINGTON: Eating a portion of processed red meat daily can boost a person's risk of dying young by up to 20 per cent, said a long-running US study of more than 120,000 people released on Monday.

While the research by Harvard University experts offers more evidence that eating red meat increases the risk of heart disease and cancer, it also counsels that substituting fish and poultry may lower early death risk.

"This study provides clear evidence that regular consumption of red meat, especially processed meat, contributes substantially to premature death," said Frank Hu, senior author of the study in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Researchers gleaned their data from a study of 37,698 men who were followed for 22 years and 83,644 women who were tracked for 28 years.

Subjects answered surveys about their eating habits every four years.

Those who ate a card-deck-sized serving of unprocessed red meat each day on average saw a 13 per cent higher risk of dying than those who did not eat red meat as frequently.

And if the red meat was processed, like in a hot dog or two slices of bacon, that risk jumped to 20 per cent.

However, substituting nuts for red meat lowered total mortality risk by 19 per cent, while poultry or whole grains lowered the risk 14 per cent and fish did so by seven per cent.

The authors said between seven and nine per cent of all deaths in the study "could be prevented if all the participants consumed fewer than 0.5 servings per day of total red meat."

Processed red meat has been shown to contain ingredients such as saturated fat, sodium, nitrites and some carcinogens that are linked to many chronic ailments including heart disease and cancer.

"More than 75 per cent of the $2.6 trillion in annual US health care costs are from chronic disease," said an accompanying commentary by Dean Ornish, a physician and dietary expert at the University of California, San Francisco.

"Eating less red meat is likely to reduce morbidity from these illnesses, thereby reducing health care costs."

A separate study, also led by Hu but published in Circulation, an American Heart Association journal, found that men who drank sugar-sweetened beverages daily faced a 20 per cent higher risk of heart disease than men who did not.

The study tracked more than 42,000 men, most of them Caucasian, over 22 years and found higher heart risks, as higher levels of inflammation and harmful lipids known as triglycerides in daily sweet-drinkers.

The effects were not seen in men who drank as many as two sugar-sweetened beverages per week.

According to Hu, the research "provides strong justification for reducing sugary beverage consumption among patients, and more importantly, in the general population."

Heart disease is the biggest killer in the United States and top risk factors include obesity, smoking, lack of exercise, diabetes and poor eating habits.

-AFP/ac


http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/health/view/1188612/1/.html

Study: Sugary drink each day ups men's heart disease risk by 20 percent

By

Ryan Jaslow

(CBS News) Bad news for blokes who love soda. A new study has found drinking one glass of a sugary beverage each day might cause heart disease.

Soda a day may lead to heart attacks in men
Swapping sugary drinks for diet soda, water leads to weight loss

For the study, Harvard researchers looked at almost 43,000 men between 40 and 75 who were involved in an earlier study that started in 1986 and ended in 2008. Every two years, the men would answer questions about their diet habits, and each man got a blood test halfway through the 22-year study.

PICTURES: Sugary drink shockers: What recent report says

After controlling for other risk factors for heart disease such as smoking, lack of physical activity, alcohol use and family history of heart disease, the researchers still found that men who drank a 12-ounce sugary beverage each day were 20 percent more likely to develop heart disease. These men also had higher levels of heart disease markers triglycerides and C-reactive protein compared with non-drinkers, and lower levels of "good" HDL cholesterol. The study is published in the March 12 issue of Circulation.

"This study adds to the growing evidence that sugary beverages are detrimental to cardiovascular health," study author Dr. Frank B. Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology in the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, said in a written statement.

Drinking something sugary less frequently - like twice per week or twice per month - did not increase risk, nor did drinking diet beverages.

Study co-author Dr. Walter Willett, chair of the nutrition department at Harvard School of Public Health, told CBS News medical correspondent Dr. John LaPook that a typical 12-ounce soda contains 10 teaspoons of sugar, but lots of soda drinkers opt for a 20-ounce bottle, which contains up to 18 teaspoons of sugar in one sitting.

"Continually subjecting our bodies to high amounts of glucose, to high blood sugar levels that trigger large secretions of insulin results in stresses that in the long run show up as high risk of heart disease and diabetes," Willett told CBS News medical correspondent Dr. John LaPook.

The study looked only at men but previous research suggests women aren't off the hook. A study last November showed women who regularly drank sugary beverages were nearly four times more likely to have higher levels of triglycerides and sugar in their blood, compared with women who didn't drink soda.  

Heart disease kills more Americans than any other disease, almost 600,000 deaths each year.

That's not all. Recent studies have tied drinking sugary beverages to more risk for diabetes,obesity, strokes, COPD, insomnia, bone loss and headaches.

Dr. Steven Nissen, chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, told Dr. LaPook that it's quite possible other factors contribute to these findings in soda drinkers.

"It's very likely people who choose to drink sugared soft drinks actually have a variety of health habits that are not heart healthy, and it may well be those health habits that are responsible for the increase in risk," he said. The American Beverage Association takes that same position.

The American Heart Association recommends that adult men consumer no more than 150 calories per day from added sugars, and 100 calories for American women.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57397299-10391704/study-sugary-drink-each-day-ups-mens-heart-disease-risk-by-20-percent/