Medical Bulletin 19/October/2022

Cardiorespiratory fitness is improved by exercise, during and after chemotherapy

Cardiorespiratory fitness, measured by peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak), is regarded as one of the most significant independent predictors of cardiovascular health. During cancer treatment, VO2peak declines up to 25%. Cancer treatment often leads to adverse effects that impair the patient's health related quality of life (HRQoL), including reduced cardiorespiratory fitness, increased fatigue and cardiovascular morbidity. Physical activity is proven to mitigate these risks. Exercise therapy is associated with increased cardiorespiratory fitness, improved VO2peak, and a decline in cardiovascular morbidity, cancer mortality, and overall mortality.

Reference:

Annemiek M.E. Walenkamp et al,JACC CardioOncology

Risk of multiple diseases increases if you get less than five hours' sleep a night: Study

A new study, published in PLOS Medicine suggested that Getting less than five hours of sleep in mid-to-late life could be linked to an increased risk of developing at least two chronic diseases, finds a new

The study led by UCL researchers, analysed the impact of sleep duration on the health of more than 7,000 men and women at the ages of 50, 60 and 70, from the Whitehall II cohort study.

Researchers examined the relationship between how long each participant slept for, mortality and whether they had been diagnosed with two or more chronic diseases (multimorbidity) – such as heart disease, cancer or diabetes – over the course of 25 years.

People who reported getting five hours of sleep or less at age 50 were 20% more likely to have been diagnosed with a chronic disease and 40% more likely to be diagnosed with two or more chronic diseases over 25 years, compared to people who slept for up to seven hours.

Reference:

Dr Severine Sabia et al,Association of sleep duration at age 50, 60, and 70 years with risk of multimorbidity in the UK: 25-year follow-up of the Whitehall II cohort study',PLoS Medicine,DOI10.1371/journal.pmed.1004109

Future risk of dementia can be lowered if early depression is timely intervened: Study

Over 55 million people worldwide live with dementia, a disabling neurocognitive condition that mainly affects older adults. No effective treatment for dementia exists but identifying ways to help minimize or prevent dementia would help to lessen the burden of the disease.

Depression has long been associated with an increased risk of dementia, and now a new study provides evidence that timely treatment of depression could lower the risk of dementia in specific groups of patients.

The study, led by Jin-Tai Yu, MD, PhD, Huashan Hospital, Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, and Wei Cheng, PhD, Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Fudan University, Shanghai, China, appears in Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier.

Professor Yu and Professor Cheng used data collected by the UK Biobank, a population-based cohort of over 500,000 participants. The current study included more than 350,000 participants, including 46,280 participants with depression. During the course of the study, 725 of the depressed patients developed dementia.

Reference:

"Depression, Depression Treatments, and Risk of Incident Dementia: A Prospective Cohort Study of 354,313 Participants," by Liu Yang, Yue-Ting Deng, Yue Leng, Ya-Nan Ou, Yu-Zhu Li, Shi-Dong Chen, Xiao-Yu He, Bang-Sheng Wu, Shu-Yi Huang, Ya-Ru Zhang, Kevin Kuo, Wei Feng, Qiang Dong, Jian-Feng Feng, John Suckling, A. David Smith, Fei Li, Wei Cheng, Jin-Tai Yu (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2022.08.026). It appears as an Article in Press in Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier.

Important step in pursuit of HIV cure taken by Danish researchers

A team of researchers has apparently found an important element in the equation.to find a cure for HIV, for which, until now researchers had been struggling hard. So says Dr. Ole Schmeltz Søgaard, who is the senior author. The study has been published in the journal Nature Medicine.

"This study is one of the first to be carried out on human beings in which we have demonstrated a way to strengthen the body's own ability to fight HIV – even when today's standard treatment is paused. We thus regard the study as an important step in the direction of a cure," he says.

The study was conducted in close collaboration with researchers from the UK, USA, Spain and Canada.

Reference:

PROFESSOR OLE SCHMELTZ SØGAARD et al,Early intervention with 3BNC117 and romidepsin at antiretroviral treatment initiation in people with HIV-1: a phase 1b/2a, randomized trial,Nature Medicine,