Common painkillers may raise risk of heart attack by 100% – study

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Risk of myocardial infarction is greatest in first month of taking NSAIDs such as ibuprofen if dose is high, say researchers

Commonly prescribed painkillers including ibuprofen increase the likelihood of having a heart attack within the first month of taking them if consumed in high doses, a study suggests.

All five nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) examined could raise the risk as early as the first week of use, an international team of researchers found.

Related: Should I stop taking Ibuprofen?

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Common painkillers may raise risk of heart attack by 100% – study

Study looks at cannabis ingredient"s ability to help children"s tumours

British scientists are investigating whether a compound found in cannabis could be used to shrink brain tumours in children.

The study of the effects of cannabidiol (CBD), the non-psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, was prompted by a growing number of parents giving it to children with a brain tumour after buying it online. The lead researcher, Prof Richard Grundy of Nottingham University’s children’s brain tumour centre, said in the last six months there had been a surge in parents administering it without medical advice in the belief it might help.

While no research has been done into how CBD can help children’s brain tumours, some work has been done looking at how cannabis-based molecules can help adult cancer patients. Products containing cannabidiol can be bought online, although recent changes mean companies now require a licence to sell them.

“New ways to treat childhood brain tumours are urgently needed to extend and improve the quality of life in malignant brain tumour patients, so we are excited at the prospect of testing the effect of cannabidiol on brain tumour cells,” said Grundy.

Brain tumours kill more children in the UK than any other type of cancer. Around 1,750 under-18s each year are diagnosed with cancer, of which about 400 are cancers of the brain and spinal cord.

The study, thought to be the first of its kind in the world, will seek to establish whether CBD reduces tumours. The researchers will grow cells from different brain tumours in lab conditions, some with the addition of cannabidiol molecules and others without. They will then compare how the presence of tumour cells differs in both samples through a technique called cell staining. This will help them see how many of the cells are dividing and whether any are dying.

Grundy said: “We expect the cells – brain tumour and normal brain – grown in our standard conditions to be healthy and actively dividing. We expect that normal brain cells grown in cannabidiol will remain healthy. However, we expect the brain tumour cells grown in cannabidiol to stop growing and die.”

Katie Sheen, of the Astro Brain Tumour Fund, which is co-funding the study, said if it proved to be successful CBD could be a gentler, less toxic way of treating cancer than chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

Dr Wai Liu, a research fellow at St George’s University of London, said: “We have performed experiments using CBD in leukaemia and it can deactivate signalling pathways, making cells more responsive to chemotherapy.”

He said some drug companies combined CBD with psychoactive component tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) with positive responses, especially when combined with chemotherapy.

Liu added: “All cells need to communicate and these communications get jammed up, and CBD tries to correct this by restoring them. This ultimately results in these cells being able to undergo cell death.”

“People think that children’s cells are more flexible so there is a possibility that CBD may have a slightly different effect. We will only be able to understand the precise mechanism and value of this treatment when studies like this are done.”

Among those supporting the project are the parents of William Frost, a four-year-old who was diagnosed with a ependymoma brain tumour in 2014 and is being treated at the Nottingham centre. William’s father, Steve, said: “We were told halfway through 2016 that nothing more could be done for William. We couldn’t bear to accept the news and decided to look into alternative treatments.

“We started William on a low-carbohydrate (ketogenic) diet and cannabidiol. Six months later William’s tumour had shrunk by two-thirds. He is slowly improving and attending school part-time.”

Study looks at cannabis ingredient"s ability to help children"s tumours

UTI test used by GPs gives wrong results in at least a fifth of cases, study claims

A test that is routinely used by doctors to diagnose urinary tract infections wrongly gives a negative result in a fifth of cases, scientists have found.

The findings imply that a large proportion of women who seek medical help for UTIs such as cystitis are being misdiagnosed, with some being told their problem is psychological. Many women with severe symptoms are also likely to have been refused antibiotics.

Stefan Heytens, a practicing GP and a researcher at the University of Ghent, said: “A substantial percentage of women visiting their GP with symptoms of a UTI, who test negative for a bacterial infection, are told they have no infection and sent home without treatment.”

Rather than using unreliable tests, he said, women should be diagnosed and treated on the basis of their symptoms.

Each year an estimated four million people, the vast majority women, will have a bout of cystitis. It typically involves bladder pain, an intense burning sensation when passing urine and the need to urinate urgently, sometimes several times an hour.

While unpleasant and inconvenient, cystitis normally clears without medicine within a couple of days. But if symptoms are severe or linger and antibiotics are required, GPs often carry out a “dipstick” test using a litmus-style indicator or send a urine sample to a microbiology lab, where it is cultured to see whether harmful bacteria is present.

In at least a fifth of cases, these tests come back negative, and doctors had been at a loss to explain what was wrong with this subset of patients. Some have been diagnosed with unexplained “urethral syndrome” while for others it has been suggested the root cause might be psychological.

The latest work proposes a third explanation: the tests are at fault.

The study, published in Clinical Microbiology and Infection, recruited 220 women who were visiting their GP for UTI symptoms and 86 healthy volunteers, all of whom gave urine samples.

The standard culture test detected bacteria in 81% of the samples. But a more advanced technique, designed to spot tiny quantities of bacterial DNA, found evidence of an infection in 98% of the women with symptoms.

Only about 10% of the healthy women tested positive for bacteria such as E. coli, suggesting that the results were not simply explained by trace levels of bacteria that are always present.

The authors are not sure why some infections failed to grow in culture. “The microbiologists in our institution do not have the slightest idea,” said Heygens. “They are just surprised that their test is not as infallible as they thought.”

However, he had this advice for doctors: “The woman that is visiting you with typical urinary complaints has an infection. There is nothing more to explore.”

The findings come after researchers concluded last year that cranberry juice, traditionally recommended by doctors as a natural cure, has no discernible effect on cystitis.

Prof James Malone Lee, who runs a specialist clinic for chronic UTIs at Whittington Hospital in London, highlighted the inadequacies of current testing in parliament last year. “The patients attending our centre describe frequent occurrences of them presenting with typical symptoms of urinary infection but being denied treatment because the tests are negative,” he said. “They are told emphatically that nothing is wrong.”

The consequences for the minority of women who suffer chronic infections could be devastating, he added. “It is appalling that patients coming to our centre have been told that their problems are psychological,” he said. “We have got to accept that our tests are discredited and we must start to consider what happens to those who go untreated because they tested negative.”

Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said the vast majority of women who present at their GP surgery with a UTI are given a test aimed at identifying infection. “GPs rely on the results of these tests, so if [they are] ineffective in properly determining the type of infection – as this research suggests the urine test is – it is certainly concerning, and it needs to be addressed,” she said.

UTI test used by GPs gives wrong results in at least a fifth of cases, study claims

Ad linking alcohol to cancer most effective at curbing drinking, study finds

A graphic Australian advertisement that highlights the link between alcohol and cancer has been nominated by drinkers as the most effective in leading them to reconsider their alcohol intake.

The video advertisement, titled Spread, was developed and funded by the Western Australia government. It shows alcohol being absorbed into the bloodstream, spreading and causing cancerous cell mutations in the liver, bowel and throat.

Researchers led by renowned international behavioural scientist Professor Melanie Wakefield tested 83 English-language alcohol advertisements from around the world on 2,174 Australian adults who regularly consume alcohol.

Study participants ranked each advertisement on a five-point scale, with a score of “one” representing a low motivation to reduce drinking after viewing and “five” representing high motivation to reduce drinking after viewing.

Spread ranked the highest with an average score of 3.77 and was favoured across a range of groups including men, women, young and older adults, and low and high-risk drinkers.

Four out of the top 10 most effective advertisements were from Australia and of those, all were from Western Australia. The least motivating ad, from New Zealand, was titled Add Nothing, and encouraged drinking water instead of beer. The results were published on Thursday in the medical journal BMJ Open.

The McCusker Centre for Action on Alcohol and Youth gave input into the development of the highest-ranked ad. The centre’s executive officer, Julia Stafford, said Spread was successful because experts in the field had been approached for input.

“We are really pleased that the evidence base for these harm-reduction ads is building and that we are learning more about what works in designing and running them,” Stafford said.

“It is important that very careful, research-based approaches are being taken.”

According to the Cancer Council of Australia, more than 3,200 cases of cancer each year could be prevented nationally if people limited their alcohol consumption.

But the CEO of Cancel Council Victoria, Todd Harper, said the carcinogenic properties of alcohol were still widely unknown in the community.

“Our 2015 survey of Victorian men and women found that nearly half of the respondents either believed that alcohol made no difference or were not sure if it had any effect on a person’s risk of cancer,” Harper said.

“It’s worrying because alcohol is a group one carcinogen – the highest classification available. It means that there is strong evidence that alcohol causes cancer at some body sites in humans.”

He said that “every drink” increased the risk of mouth, throat, bowel, liver and female breast cancers.

This risk as well as other alcohol-related harms has prompted some public health experts and health professionals to call for plain packaging on alcohol products that warn people of their risk, similar to that used on tobacco products.

But Alcohol Beverages Australia executive director Fergus Taylor dismissed the Spread adas “off the mark” and “scaremongering”.

“The industry has long advocated for targeted measures to deal with specific areas of problem consumption and misuse, as opposed to broad-based, population-wide measures like ads that use cynical scare tactics to frighten responsible drinkers,” he said.

“These ads will just be dismissed as scaremongering by the vast majority of Australians who drink responsibly and are well aware that alcohol should be consumed in moderation.”

Taylor accused researchers of “simply demonising a product that has well-established health benefits when consumed at moderate and responsible levels”.

Evidence from the World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research identifies a causal relationship between alcohol and cancer. While any level of drinking increases cancer risk, this risk increases in line with the level of consumption.

Ad linking alcohol to cancer most effective at curbing drinking, study finds

Umbilical cord blood could slow brain"s ageing, study suggests

Scientists have reversed memory and learning problems in aged mice with infusions of a protein found in human umbilical cord blood.

The striking results have raised hopes for a treatment that staves off mental decline in old age, but researchers stressed that more studies, including human trials, are needed before the therapy can be considered for clinical use.

Tests on frail rodents found that the protein therapy rejuvenated an area of the brain called the hippocampus, which is crucial for memory formation, and one of the first and most important regions to deteriorate in old age.

Older mice that received the treatment reacted like younger animals in a series of behavioural tests, according to researchers at Stanford University in California. They escaped from a maze faster than before, had better memories, and started building nests again, a skill the animals tend to lose in old age.

Researchers led by Tony Wyss-Coray made the discovery after they noticed that human umbilical cord blood had unusually high levels of a protein called TIMP2 when compared with blood from older people. When injected into mice, the protein ramped up the activity of a group of genes that revitalised the hippocampus, and made it more able to adapt to new information. Details of the study are reported in Nature.

The work is the latest in a string of studies that suggest molecules found in young blood may be able to rejuvenate old brains and other tissues. If the therapies are effective in humans, they could become a potent weapon against the cognitive decline that comes with old age, and also neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

But until the treatment has proved itself in humans, scientists are roundly cautious of the work. The lesson from Alzheimer’s research on mice is that almost everything works in the animals, and so far nothing works in humans, said Rob Howard, professor of old age psychiatry at University College London. “Having taken that on on board, this is a really interesting way to understand how we might help people who are aged or in the early stages of the disease,” he said. The protein therapy might not reverse brain ageing, or halt Alzheimer’s, but it might boost what remains of the healthy brain to at least offset some of the decline that accompanies old age.

Jennifer Wild, a clinical psychologist at Oxford University, said that while the results were interesting, it was too early to consider it as a therapy for humans. “It’s exciting for mice who have cognitive ageing, but it’s way too early to start extrapolating that to say we can help humans,”, she said.

Umbilical cord blood could slow brain"s ageing, study suggests

First US sugar tax sees soft drink sales fall by almost 10%, study shows

The first sugar tax to be introduced on soft drinks in the United States to fight obesity has cut sales by nearly 10% and apparently increased the numbers of people buying water instead, a study has shown.

Berkeley, California, introduced a substantial tax on sugar-sweetened beverages on 1 March 2015. At the rate of 10% – or one penny per fluid ounce – it adds 12 cents to a 12 ounce can of soda priced at $ 1, or 68 cents to a two litre bottle costing just over $ 2 before the tax.

Experts hope that sugar taxes will hike the prices of unhealthy drinks and reduce the number of people who consume large quantities of them. Sugar-sweetened drinks are known to be a significant contributor to obesity, particularly in children and young people.

But taxes have only been introduced after battles with the industry. The latest tax to be introduced – in Philadelphia, in January, where unlike Berkeley incomes are low and obesity rates high – is still being challenged in the courts.

Berkeley is unlike most cities in America, with far higher levels of wealth and education and low consumption of colas and other sugary drinks. Yet Barry Popkin of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA and Lynn Silver from the Public Health Institute found that, even there, the tax had changed people’s behaviour.

“This surprised me,” Popkin told the Guardian. “I didn’t think we’d get much effect at all.” The debate around obesity and the sugar tax had already brought consumption down in Berkeley – and yet the introduction of the tax appears to have brought it down further.

One year after the introduction of the tax, their paper in the journal Plos Medicine shows that sales of sugary drinks in Berkeley fell by 9.6%, while sales in surrounding areas with no tax rose by 6.9%.

While the academics cannot prove that consumers bought water instead, bottled water sales in Berkeley increased by 15.6% after the introduction of the tax. Sales of other non-taxed drinks such as unsweetened teas, milk and fruit juices also rose. But diet drinks and energy drinks appeared not to be so popular – those declined by 9.2%.

Shopkeepers did not lose out because the average grocery bill remained the same. The authors of the study suggest it is possible that consumers are shifting away from sugary drinks to healthier ones – and without causing undue economic hardship because spending did not drop.

In the first year, the tax was levied only in the chain supermarkets and chain petrol stations, so there is still scope for a bigger effect when independent and small shops also bring it in. The money raised is going to child health programmes.

Popkin expects the impact of the tax to be far greater in Philadelphia, where it has been set higher, at 15%, and where incomes are some of the lowest in the USA and consumption of sugary drinks and obesity are high. Proceeds from the tax are going to pay for much needed daycare centres for children. “That was how they sold it,” said Popkin. “The revenue has been double what they expected. Daycare centres have doubled and tripled in size.”

The battle for sugar taxes has not yet been won in the USA, he said. “The industry is still fighting tooth and nail. We have reached a turning point, but the industry is still fighting. They are fighting desperately in Philadelphia because it is a low-income and very high-purchasing city. The implications are quite profound.”

The American Heart Association praised study and the sugar tax.

Its CEO, Nancy Brown said: “This study adds to the compelling evidence that simply cannot be ignored. The residents of Berkeley, who voted for a sugary drink tax in their community, are now seeing the benefits of significantly reduced consumption of sugary drinks, significantly increased consumption of water and consumers are switching to healthier drinks.

“Additionally, Berkeley small businesses have not seen a drop in overall sales. This positive impact is magnified by the fact that the revenue from the tax is being invested in health and wellness across the city.”

But the American Beverage Association said: “This study acknowledges that taxes do not demonstrate a meaningful reduction in obesity rates. A beverage tax that increases the price on certain beverages by more than 50 percent only yields a reduction of 6.4 calories per day.

“America’s beverage companies know we must play a role in improving public health, which is why we are taking aggressive actions to help people reduce the sugar and calories they get from beverages.”

First US sugar tax sees soft drink sales fall by almost 10%, study shows

One in four young women in UK report mental health problems, study shows

A quarter of young women in the UK have suffered from anxiety and depression, according to a new survey released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The figures were collected as part of a wide-ranging survey gauging the wellbeing of people aged between 16 and 24. They show that, despite an increase in the number of those who said their quality of life had improved since 2009, one in four young women said they had faced symptoms linked to poor mental wellbeing in 2014-15.

The report said that young women were “significantly more likely” than their male counterparts to recognise and admit being anxious or depressed, with less than one in six young men reporting similar symptoms.

The ONS report used data taken from surveys that focused on a person’s overall happiness – shown by their attitudes to issues such as relationships, work, education and finances – to create a nationwide picture.

The results show that while more than a third of young people aged between 16 and 19 who were questioned said they had a “very high” level of life satisfaction, this dropped to just a quarter among people aged between 20 and 24.

The study also reveals that in the four years from 2009-10 to 2013-14, the number of young people saying their mental health had “deteriorated” rose from 18% to 21%.

Tom Madders, campaign director at the mental health charity YoungMinds, said: “There is still a huge amount of misunderstanding about mental health conditions, making people less likely to open up to others if they are struggling to cope. This is particularly difficult for young people who face pressure, including stress at school, college or university and body image issues.”

He said that an environment of 24-hour access to social media led to some young people feeling they needed to “keep up the pretence of having a perfect life”.

Other figures from the study show that the number of young people who believe they are financially comfortable has increased since 2009-10. Seven years ago, 15% said they were struggling to get by, while by 2014-15 the number reporting financial hardship was 7% – and a significantly higher percentage (45%) said they were satisfied with their household income, up from about 30% in 2009-10.

The report added that levels of “general health satisfaction” had risen, with 56% saying they were “mostly or completely happy” in 2014-15, compared with about 52% the year before.

However, the figures also show a rise in households deemed to be living in poverty, based on families who earn less than 60% of the average UK income. One in four said they lived in a household at such a level, compared with 20% in 2008.

YoungMinds recently called on teachers, parents and carers to sign an open letter to the prime minister, Theresa May, urging her to place an increased emphasis in schools and colleges on improving young people’s mental health, and to recognise the pressures caused by exam stress, cyberbullying and fears over employment when they leave education.

Madders said: “A good quality of life includes having positive mental health and wellbeing, so it’s crucial that the problems which young people report are taken seriously and supported to prevent them escalating and going into crises.”

One in four young women in UK report mental health problems, study shows

Recorded childhood cancers rise by 13% worldwide, study finds

Childhood cancers have risen across the globe by 13% over 20 years, according to data from the World Health Organization’s cancer section.

Cancer in children is comparatively rare; when it does occur it is more likely to have been triggered by something in the child’s genetic makeup than by anything to do with lifestyle or the environment.

Part of the reason for the rise is thought likely to be better detection. But experts say it is vital to collect better data from all over the world to establish all the causes, which could include infections and environmental pollutants.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which has published its findings in the medical journal Lancet Oncology, says the numbers recorded in cancer registries around the world have gone up since the 1980s. Between 2001-2010, there were 140 children in every million who were diagnosed with cancer under the age of 14, which represents a 13% increase.

IARC for the first time gives numbers for adolescents with cancer. There were 185 adolescents in every million diagnosed with cancer, most commonly lymphomas, which are cancers of the white blood cells.

“Cancer is a significant cause of death in children and adolescents, in spite of its relatively rare occurrence before the age of 20 years,” said IARC’s director, Christopher Wild. “This extensive new set of information on the pattern and incidence of cancer in young people is vital to raise awareness and to better understand and combat this neglected area of health early in life.”

A third of the cases under the age of 15 were of leukaemia, a cancer of the blood that is now successfully treated in Europe and the US.

A second paper, published in the Lancet Haematology journal, looks at the stark variation in survival from acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (or ALL) in childhood around the world between 2005 and 2009. In Germany, 92% of children survived for at least five years but in Colombia the figure was 52%.

Survival rates have improved significantly in all countries. From 1995-99 and 2005-09, five-year survival for the disease ALL, in children, increased from 79% to 89% in the UK, and from 83% to 88% in the US.

Regarding a second form of the disease, acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), five-year survival increased from 59% to 68% in the UK and from 52% to 63% in the US. Survival in China increased substantially over the same period – from 11% to 69% for ALL survival, and 4% to 41% for AML survival.

The IARC study on the global cancer rise has gathered information from cancer registries worldwide. But while the data covers 100% of children in Europe and North America, it accounts for only 5% or a lower percentage in Africa and Asia, where the information is not routinely collected.

In poorer countries, some children’s cancers are never diagnosed and their deaths will not be investigated. Social factors may explain why the cancer numbers for girls and small babies are very low.

In wealthier countries, greater understanding of cancers affecting children and adolescents and the development of better tools will account for much of the rise in numbers.

“It’s likely that this reported rise in children’s cancers is, in part, due to improvements in diagnosis,” said Anna Perman, Cancer Research UK’s senior science information manager. “We now have a better understanding of the symptoms of children’s cancers, which helps doctors to spot those who might have gone undiagnosed before. It’s unlikely environmental factors that children are exposed to either early in life or during development in the womb play a big role in this rise. Although some environmental and lifestyle factors that do play a role in cancer are on the rise, these usually take many years to influence cancer risk and would be unlikely to cause cancer at a young age.”

Recorded childhood cancers rise by 13% worldwide, study finds

Pets Help Kids Build Immunity Even Before They’re Born, Study Finds

If you’ve been considering adopting a dog or a cat, this new study might help you make up your mind: According to research published in Microbiome, children born into homes with pets have higher levels of gut microbes that protect against allergies and obesity. Researchers say that indirect exposure to furry friends is especially beneficial to babies in their first three months of life, and even while they’re still in the womb.

This period appears to be a “critical window of time when gut immunity and microbes co-develop,” says lead author Anita Kozyrskyj, PhD, a pediatric epidemiologist at the University of Alberta. Disruptions to this development process—for example, the introduction of foreign bacteria—can change immunity and have implications for long-term health, she adds.

Kozyrskyj’s study compared fecal samples from 746 Canadian infants. Some of the infants were from families with pets (70% of which were dogs), some were from families who had pets during their pregnancy but not once the babies were born, and some had no recent pets.

The researchers found that babies from households with pets had twice the amount of two specific bacteria, Ruminococcus and Oscillospira, that have been linked with reduced risk for childhood allergies (such as dermatitis and asthma) and obesity, respectively.

Even when pets had been given up for adoption before the babies were born, this benefit was still seen. This shows that pet exposure affected the babies’ microbiomes indirectly, with influential bacteria transferring from the animal to the mother to the unborn child.

This bacterial exchange occurred regardless of the type of birth (vaginal versus C-section), regardless of whether the babies were breastfed, and regardless of whether antibiotics were used during birth. This is important, say the authors, as previous research has shown that C-sections, antibiotics, and not breastfeeding can all negatively impact babies’ immunity.

The presence of pets in the house during a woman’s pregnancy was also associated with a reduced likelihood that she would transmit group B strep bacteria—which can colonize in the vagina and cause pneumonia in newborns—to her baby during birth.

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The study builds on decades of research showing that exposure to dirt and bacteria can help children build up immunity, and that kids who grow up with pets have lower rates of asthma and allergies, says Kozyrskyj. (This effect is strongest with dogs but is true with cats, as well.) “Pets have always been our best friends and they appear to be good for our babies too,” she says.

But further studies are needed to provide definitive evidence that a “dog intervention” during pregnancy can actually prevent allergies. “Our next step is to pursue the ‘does it matter’ question, to determine the allergy and obesity outcomes of studied infants at ages 1, 3, and 5,” Kozyrskyj says.

And of course, allergies and obesity aren’t products of the environment alone; genetics also play a role. It also makes sense that kids with pets have natural protection against allergies, since parents with allergies are less likely to have dogs and cats in the first place.

RELATED: 13 Fun Ways to Work Out With Your Dog

But the study’s results were adjusted to account for whether the mothers had asthma or allergies, and still held true. Kozyrskyj says her team’s findings “are independent of these two possible explanations.”

It’s not far-fetched to think that pet exposure during pregnancy could one day be an official recommendation from doctors, Kozyrskyj says. It’s even possible that scientists could develop a “dog in a pill” supplement, she adds, for mothers to take as a preventative measure against allergies and asthma.

More research is needed for these scenarios to actually happen, however. For now, families have have another reason (on top of plenty already!) to snuggle up to their fur babies—and that includes moms-to-be.

Pets Help Kids Build Immunity Even Before They’re Born, Study Finds

Recorded childhood cancers rise by 13% worldwide, study finds

Childhood cancers have risen across the globe by 13% over 20 years, according to data from the World Health Organization’s cancer section.

Cancer in children is comparatively rare; when it does occur it is more likely to have been triggered by something in the child’s genetic makeup than by anything to do with lifestyle or the environment.

Part of the reason for the rise is thought likely to be better detection. But experts say it is vital to collect better data from all over the world to establish all the causes, which could include infections and environmental pollutants.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which has published its findings in the medical journal Lancet Oncology, says the numbers recorded in cancer registries around the world have gone up since the 1980s. Between 2001-2010, there were 140 children in every million who were diagnosed with cancer under the age of 14, which represents a 13% increase.

IARC for the first time gives numbers for adolescents with cancer. There were 185 adolescents in every million diagnosed with cancer, most commonly lymphomas, which are cancers of the white blood cells.

“Cancer is a significant cause of death in children and adolescents, in spite of its relatively rare occurrence before the age of 20 years,” said IARC’s director, Christopher Wild. “This extensive new set of information on the pattern and incidence of cancer in young people is vital to raise awareness and to better understand and combat this neglected area of health early in life.”

A third of the cases under the age of 15 were of leukaemia, a cancer of the blood that is now successfully treated in Europe and the US.

A second paper, published in the Lancet Haematology journal, looks at the stark variation in survival from acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (or ALL) in childhood around the world between 2005 and 2009. In Germany, 92% of children survived for at least five years but in Colombia the figure was 52%.

Survival rates have improved significantly in all countries. From 1995-99 and 2005-09, five-year survival for the disease ALL, in children, increased from 79% to 89% in the UK, and from 83% to 88% in the US.

Regarding a second form of the disease, acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), five-year survival increased from 59% to 68% in the UK and from 52% to 63% in the US. Survival in China increased substantially over the same period – from 11% to 69% for ALL survival, and 4% to 41% for AML survival.

The IARC study on the global cancer rise has gathered information from cancer registries worldwide. But while the data covers 100% of children in Europe and North America, it accounts for only 5% or a lower percentage in Africa and Asia, where the information is not routinely collected.

In poorer countries, some children’s cancers are never diagnosed and their deaths will not be investigated. Social factors may explain why the cancer numbers for girls and small babies are very low.

In wealthier countries, greater understanding of cancers affecting children and adolescents and the development of better tools will account for much of the rise in numbers.

“It’s likely that this reported rise in children’s cancers is, in part, due to improvements in diagnosis,” said Anna Perman, Cancer Research UK’s senior science information manager. “We now have a better understanding of the symptoms of children’s cancers, which helps doctors to spot those who might have gone undiagnosed before. It’s unlikely environmental factors that children are exposed to either early in life or during development in the womb play a big role in this rise. Although some environmental and lifestyle factors that do play a role in cancer are on the rise, these usually take many years to influence cancer risk and would be unlikely to cause cancer at a young age.”

Recorded childhood cancers rise by 13% worldwide, study finds

Antibiotics overuse could increase bowel cancer risk, study finds

The overuse of antibiotics could increase a person’s risk of developing bowel cancer, the findings of a US study suggest.

Research published in medical journal Gut found extended use of antibiotics significantly increased the chance of polyp formation in the colon, a precursor of bowel cancer.

The findings add weight to emerging evidence that the type and diversity of bacteria in the gut may have a key role in the development of cancer, according to the authors of the study.

An Australian bowel cancer expert, Associate Professor Graham Newstead, the head of the colorectal unit at the Prince of Wales private hospital and director of Bowel Cancer Australia, said the research had “credence”.

“We know already that if you take antibiotics you frequently get diarrhoea,” Newstead said.

This happened because the antibiotic killed some of the normal bacteria, leading to an overgrowth of the abnormal bacteria in the gut.

But Newstead said the study did not look at the effect of antibiotics on the colon and caution must be taken.

US researchers monitored the health of more than 120,000 nurses, aged between 30 and 55, who were part of the the Nurses Health Study launched in 1976.

Between 2004 and 2010, 1,194 abnormal growths in the colon and rectum were diagnosed.

Those who had taken antibiotics for two months or more between the ages of 20 and 39 were 36% more likely to be diagnosed with an adenoma, or polyp, compared with those who had not taken antibiotics for any extended period in their 20s and 30s.

Similarly, women who had taken antibiotics for two months or more during their 40s and 50s were 69% more likely to be diagnosed with an adenoma.

And those who had taken these drugs for 15 days or more between the ages of 20 and 39, and between the ages of 40 and 59, were 73% more likely to be diagnosed with an adenoma.

“It does seem to indicate that people who have too many antibiotics might be at more risk of of getting polyps than people who have less of them,” Newstead said.

“And, remembering that not all polyps turn to cancer but the cancer comes from the polyps. If you have more polyps or tendency to get polyps then maybe you are slightly more at risk of getting cancer.”

The message to be taken from the study was not to use antibiotics for a “tickle” in the throat or a cold, Newstead said.

Antibiotics overuse could increase bowel cancer risk, study finds

Smoking causes one in ten deaths globally, major new study reveals

One in 10 deaths around the world is caused by smoking, according to a major new study that shows the tobacco epidemic is far from over and that the threat to lives is spreading across the globe.

There were nearly one billion smokers in 2015, in spite of tobacco control policies having been adopted by many countries. That number is expected to rise as the world’s population expands. One in every four men is a smoker and one in 20 women. Their lives are likely to be cut short – smoking is the second biggest risk factor for early death and disability after high blood pressure.

The researchers found there were 6.4m deaths attributed to smoking in 2015, of which half were in just four populous countries – China, India, USA, and Russia.

Major efforts to control tobacco have paid off, according to the study published by the Lancet medical journal. A World Health Organisation treaty in 2005 ratified by 180 countries recommends measures including smoking bans in public places, high taxes in cigarettes and curbs on advertising and marketing.

Between 1990 and 2015, smoking prevalence dropped from 35% to 25% among men and 8% to 5% among women. High income countries and Latin America – especially Brazil which brought in tough curbs on tobacco – achieved the biggest drops in numbers of smokers.

But many countries have made marginal progress since the treaty was agreed, say the authors of the study from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in the US. And although far more men smoke than women, there have been bigger reductions in the proportions of men smoking also, with minimal changes among women.

Senior author Dr Emmanuela Gakidou said there were 933m daily smokers in 2015, which she called “a very shocking number”. The paper focused only on those who smoke every day. “The toll of tobacco is likely to be much larger if we include occasional smokers and former smokers and people who use other tobacco products like smokeless tobacco. This is on the low end of how important tobacco is,” she told the Guardian.

There is much more that needs to be done, she said. “There is a widespread notion that the war on tobacco has been won but I think our evidence shows that we need renewed and sustained efforts because the toll of smoking in 2015 is much larger than most people would think, so we absolutely have a lot more to do. We need new and improved strategies to do it and a lot of effort and political will.”

Traditionally there have been far fewer women smoking around the world than men, but it was a huge problem for both, she said.

“There are some really worrisome findings – for example in Russia female smoking has increased in the last 25 years significantly. There are also some western European countries where about one in three women are smoking. So it is true globally that a lot fewer women smoke than men but there are some countries where it is a big problem for women,” she said.

Dr Kelly Henning of Bloomberg Philanthropies, which is committed to tobacco control and co-funded the study with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said: “I think the study highlights the fact that the work is not finished on tobacco. The good news is the decline in daily smoking among men and women … however there are still many smokers in the world and there is still a lot of work to do. I think we have to keep our eye on the issue and really do more.”

Countries with some of the highest death tolls such as China and Indonesia “really don’t need those health problems – they have so many other issues they are trying to address. But tobacco control is critically important in those places,” she said.

“China has more than a million deaths a year from smoking related diseases and China is only beginning to see the effects of their high male smoking rate. That is only one instance of what is expected to become an extremely major epidemic,” she said.

Writing in a linked comment, Professor John Britton from the University of Nottingham said: “Responsibility for this global health disaster lies mainly with the transnational tobacco companies, which clearly hold the value of human life in very different regard to most of the rest of humanity.” British American Tobacco, for instance, sold 665bn cigarettes in 2015 and made a £5.2bn profit.

“Today, the smoking epidemic is being exported from the rich world to low-income and middle-income countries, slipping under the radar while apparently more immediate priorities occupy and absorb scarce available human and financial resources,” he writes. “The epidemic of tobacco deaths will progress inexorably throughout the world until and unless tobacco control is recognised as an immediate priority for development, investment, and research.”

Smoking causes one in ten deaths globally, major new study reveals

Cancer patients have 55% greater risk of suicide, study finds

Cancer patients have a 55% greater risk of suicide than people without the potentially deadly disease, according to preliminary research findings.

Previous research has found suicide rates to be higher than in the general population but a paper being presented at this week’s European Congress of Psychiatry in Florence, Italy is an attempt to quantify the size of the increased risk.

Co-author Dr Raffaella Calati from the department of emergency psychiatry and post-acute care at Lapeyronie hospital, Montpellier, described the results, derived by pooling data from 15 studies, as “extremely preliminary” but nevertheless significant.

“The key message that remains is that in the majority of the studies there is an increased risk,” she said. “We are quite sure the risk would be higher, although I cannot say the exact number.”

The analysis, which also looked at suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts, included studies published between 1983 and 2015 from Australia, Canada, China, Norway, South Korea, Sweden, the UK and the US.

Patients with cancer were found to have a 55% higher suicide rate compared with people without the disease. But the analysis revealed no increased risk of suicide attempts ( 8,147,762 participants) or suicidal thoughts (42,700 participants) in patients with cancer.

The authors are currently seeking to add more studies into the mix and, in their initial analysis, did not seek to rule out other external factors that might influence the results, hence their emphasis on it being preliminary.

They say: “The assessment of suicide risk in patients with cancer is crucial. We suggest there is a need in cancer patients to be screened and cared not only for anxiety and depression, but also specifically for those people with suicidal thoughts and a lifetime history of suicide attempts, in particular during the period immediately subsequent to the diagnosis of cancer.”

A 2014 study by Cancer Research UK and the Scottish government found that three-quarters of cancer patients who also have clinical depression were not receiving any treatment for depression.

As the analysis is ongoing, it has not yet been submitted to a medical journal for publication but to be accepted for the European Congress of Psychiatry it had to undergo a peer review process set out by the European Psychiatric Association.

• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here

Cancer patients have 55% greater risk of suicide, study finds

US cancer death rates continue to fall as 5-year survival rates rise – study

Cancer death rates in the United States are continuing to fall and the five-year survival rates of those diagnosed with the disease have risen, research shows.

The Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, published on Friday, also shows a decline in incidence of cancer among men in recent years, although it remained stable among women.

Death rates from 2010 to 2014 decreased for 11 of the 16 most common types of cancer in men and for 13 of the 18 most common types of cancer in women, including lung, colorectal, female breast, and prostate cancers.

The authors, from the American Cancer Society, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Cancer Institute and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR) suggest a decline in smoking – down more than 50% over the last 50 years – as well as improved early detection and more effective treatment helped bring about the fall.

But they warn that smoking continues to pose a threat along with obesity, rates of which are at 20% or or more in every state.

NAACCR executive director Betsy Kohler said. “The continued drops in overall cancer death rates in the United States are welcome news, reflecting improvements in prevention, early detection, and treatment.

“But this report also shows us that progress has been limited for several cancers, which should compel us to renew our commitment to efforts to discover new strategies for prevention, early detection, and treatment, and to apply proven interventions broadly and equitably.”

The report, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, showed that death rates increased for cancers of the liver, pancreas, and brain in men and for liver and uterine cancer in women.

Overall, cancer death rates decreased by 1.8% per year in men and 1.4% a year in women.

During the period 1999 to 2013, cancer incidence rates in men fell by 2.3%, according to the study.

Compared with cases diagnosed between 1975 and 1977, five-year survival for cancers diagnosed in 2006 to 2012 increased significantly for all manifestations of the disease bar cervical and uterine cancer.

The greatest absolute increases in survival (25% or greater) were seen in prostate and kidney cancers, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, myeloma (bone marrow cancer) and leukaemia.

Further improvements in survival prospects are expected in the wake of recent advances in precision medicine and immunotherapy for late stage cancers. But the authors warn that the high cost of new cancer drugs – up to $ 10,000 (£8,000) per month – may put them out of reach even to Medicare-insured patients, who would still be left with a bill for around 20% of the drug’s cost.

US cancer death rates continue to fall as 5-year survival rates rise – study

Depression is leading cause of disability worldwide, says WHO study

Cases of depression have ballooned almost 20% in a decade, making the debilitating disorder the leading cause of disability worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

By 2015, the number of people globally living with depression, according to a revised definition, had reached 322m, up 18.4% since 2005, the UN agency said on Thursday.

“These new figures are a wake-up call for all countries to rethink their approaches to mental health and to treat it with the urgency that it deserves,” WHO chief Margaret Chan said.

According to the agency’s definition, depression is a “persistent sadness and a loss of interest in activities that people normally enjoy, accompanied by an inability to carry out daily activities for two weeks or more”.

Lack of energy, shifts in appetite or sleep patterns, substance abuse, anxiety, feelings of worthlessness and thoughts of self-harm or suicide are also common, and can affect entire families.

Jamal Edwards breaks taboos around men’s mental health

The drop in productivity, and other medical conditions often linked to depression, also takes a financial toll, with the global cost estimated at $ 1tn annually, the WHO said.

Shekhar Saxena, head of the agency’s mental health and substance abuse department, said both psychosocial and medical treatments could be highly effective, insisting on the importance of reaching more of those in need.

Even in the most developed countries, about half of people suffering from depression are not diagnosed or treated, and the percentage soars to between 80-90% in less developed nations.

Treatment can be difficult to access, while a fear of stigma also prevents many people from seeking the help required to live healthy and productive lives, the agency said.

According to the WHO, every dollar invested in improving access to treatment leads to a return of $ 4 in better health and productivity.

And “early identification and treatment of depression is a very effective means of decreasing death by suicide,” Saxena said.

There are about 800,000 suicides worldwide every year, amounting to one every four seconds. And the link to depression is clear.

Saxena pointed to studies showing that 70-80% of people who kill themselves in high-income countries, and around half of those in low-income countries, suffer from mental disorders, of which depression is the most common.

In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here

Depression is leading cause of disability worldwide, says WHO study

Colds feel worse to lonely people, study suggests

Having a cold can be a miserable experience, but it turns out that the symptoms may seem worse if you feel lonely.

A study by a team of US researchers has found while loneliness does not appear to have any impact on an individual’s chance of falling ill with a cold, or the actual severity of the symptoms, it does seem to be linked to feeling more under the weather.

But results show that feeling worse was not linked to the size of a person’s social network.

“When it comes to our health it seems that it is the quality of our social relationships that may be more important than just the quantity,” said Angie LeRoy, a co-author of the study from Rice University.

Writing in the journal Health Psychology, LeRoy and colleagues from a clutch of US universities describe how they probed the link between cold symptoms and loneliness by asking 213 healthy adults to complete questionnaires related to loneliness, their social networks and their mood before being infected with the common cold through nasal drops.

The participants were quarantined for five days, during which time they were asked to record their symptoms, such as sneezing, a runny nose or sore throat, and log the severity of their symptoms on a five point scale. In total, 159 of the participants developed a cold and had complete data.

After taking into account factors including age, sex, the season, education, income and mood markers, analysis of results from these participants revealed that those who scored higher on loneliness were no more likely to get a cold than those with low scores, but they did report symptoms of greater severity.

Delving deeper, the team found that the link was not down to the size of individuals’ social networks. “It doesn’t matter if they had a large social network,” said LeRoy. “It mattered about how they felt about their social network.”

However, when the researchers looked at the weight of mucus produced by each participant in the study, they found that there was no link to loneliness, suggesting that while loneliness was linked to how rotten participants felt, lonelier individuals were not more physically sick.

“Loneliness wasn’t necessary associated to how biologically ill they were in terms of the severity of their cold but it was associated with how severe they perceive their symptoms to be,” LeRoy told the Guardian. The authors say that helping those who are lonely build ties to others could help to reduce how bad they feel when they catch a cold.

LeRoys admits that the study does not show that loneliness is causing the perception of worse symptoms – indeed the authors note that, for example, those who are lonely often have poorer sleep. But, she says: “We measured loneliness before we exposed them to the cold and then we measured their symptoms, which infers that the loneliness came first.”

LeRoy adds that, combined with previous studies highlighting the link between loneliness and negative impacts on health, doctors and other medical professionals should take note of their patients’ mental state both when patients register and when they are unwell.

“How [patients] feel before [they are unwell] obviously could influence how they feel when they are sick, even with something as simple as a cold,” she said.

Colds feel worse to lonely people, study suggests

Thousands of pollution deaths worldwide linked to western consumers – study

Western consumers who buy cheap imported toys, clothes and mobile phones are indirectly contributing to tens of thousands of pollution-related deaths in the countries where the goods are produced, according to a landmark study.

Nearly 3.5 million people die prematurely each year due to air pollution, the research estimates, and about 22% of these deaths are associated with goods and services that were produced in one region for consumption in another.

The analysis provides the first detailed picture of the extent to which consumer demand in the US and western Europe contributes to pollution in developing countries, with profound health consequences.

“If the cost of imported products is lower because of less stringent air pollution controls in the regions where they are produced, then the consumer savings may come at the expense of lives lost elsewhere,” the authors conclude.

The study also reveals how emissions from industrial hotspots affect the health of people in neighbouring countries and, to a lesser extent, more distant regions, as pollutants circulate on global air currents. About 12% (411,100) of early deaths globally were related to air pollutants emitted in a different region of the world, the research found.

The study focused on the emission of fine particulate matter pollution (PM 2.5) from power stations, factories, aeroplanes and shipping in 13 regions, taking in data from 228 countries. Particulates are thought to account for more than 90% of the global mortality from outdoor air pollution, raising the number of deaths from heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and asthma.

The tiny particles can trigger asthma attacks in the lungs and can cross from the air sacs in the lung into the bloodstream, where they can cause inflammation, alter the way blood clots, and make blood vessels more permeable. Particulates have also been shown to migrate into other tissues, such as the liver, kidneys and brain, although it is less clear what the health consequences are in these organs, and the effects also depend on the chemical makeup of the particulates.

“In general, air pollution links to general ill health,” said Matthew Loxham, a toxicologist at Southampton University who was not involved in the study. “It’s a range of different conditions.”

The scientists used a combination of air pollution data, emissions measurements and models of global air currents to tally up where pollution was emitted and where it ended up in 2007. An economic model, based on data from the Global Trade Analysis Project, was then used to attribute air pollution to the demand of consumers for finished goods, although the results were not broken down by product type.

Chinese emissions caused more than twice the number of deaths worldwide than the emissions of any other region, followed by emissions produced in India and the rest of the Asia region. The scientists calculated that PM 2.5pollution produced in China is linked to more than 64,800 premature deaths in other regions, including more than 3,000 deaths in western Europe and the US.

However, this figure was significantly outweighed by the 108,600 premature deaths in China linked to consumption in western Europe and the US.

Steven Davis, a co-author based at the University of California, Irvine, said that the paper simply aimed to lay out the evidence for the benefit of policymakers. “It’s not really up to us to say what’s fair or not,” he said.

In a press briefing this week, his co-authors called for international action on the issue.

“For greenhouse gas emissions we have a global agreement. People can argue about whether its been effective or not – but at least we have a global framework,” said Dabo Guan, a professor in climate change economics at the University of East Anglia and the paper’s senior author. “People have thought air pollution was a local issue.”

Guan cites the example of mobile phones made in China, which might be sold for $ 200, around 70% of which goes to the company that designed the product and just $ 5-6 to the Chinese manufacturer.

“On average every six months we change our phone,” he said. “It has a health cost on the other side of the world.”

For countries like China, whose economies are dependent on exporting cheaply-made goods, improving environmental standards has to be balanced against potential negative economic impacts.

“Some other country would step up and say hey, we’re willing to let our people die to have that business,” said Davis.

Improving pollution control technologies in China, India and elsewhere in Asia would have a disproportionately large health benefit in those regions and worldwide, according to the analysis in the journal Nature.

Qiang Zhang, another author from Tsinghua University, Beijing, said that consumers in Europe and the US who buy cheap imported toys and clothes also bear a responsibility.

“We need to move our lifestyles away from cheap and wasteful,” he said.

Oliver Hayes, a pollution campaigner for Friends of the Earth air pollution, said: “No-one should be denied the right to breathe clean air, whether they live in Beijing or Barking. But air pollution doesn’t recognise borders, and it’s clear that the devastating impacts of polluters can be felt many miles from their activities.

Thousands of pollution deaths worldwide linked to western consumers – study

Moderate drinking can lower risk of heart attack, says study

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Drinking in moderation helps protect heart, with study finding it lowers risk of many conditions compared with not drinking

Moderate drinking can lower the risk of several heart conditions, according to a study that will further fuel the debate about the health implications of alcohol consumption.

The study of 1.93 million people in the UK aged over 30 found that drinking in moderation – defined as consuming no more than 14 units of alcohol a week – had a protective effect on the heart compared with not drinking.

Related: Life-saving alcohol services face devastating cuts

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Moderate drinking can lower risk of heart attack, says study

Womb cancer risk grows with extra waist weight, study suggests

Women who have a higher waist to hip ratio could have an increased risk of womb cancer, a study suggests.

Researchers writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) found that for every increase of 0.1 units in the ratio between waist and hip, the risk of developing the disease increased by 21%.

Experts from the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), which part-funded the study, said the results showed a strong relationship between cancer and carrying extra weight around the waist.

The waist to hip ratio is worked out by dividing waist circumference by hip measurement. For example, a person with a 28-inch (71cm) waist and 40-inch (102cm) hips would have a ratio of 0.7.

A woman with a ratio of 0.7 which then increased to 0.8 would have a 21% greater risk of developing womb cancer, the study suggests. For the person in the example above, this would be the equivalent of an increase from a 28-inch (71cm) waist to a 32-inch (81cm) waist, with the hip measurement remaining the same. Another 0.1 increase would raise that risk even further.

A ratio above 0.85 for women or 0.90 for men is a sign of obesity.

The WCRF estimates that about 25,000 cancer cases could be prevented every year in the UK if people were a healthy weight.

Prof Konstantinos Tsilidis, from Imperial College London, said: “These results demonstrate how important it is for women to make sure they maintain a healthy weight in order to reduce their cancer risk.”

Dr Panagiota Mitrou, director of research funding at the WCRF, said: “We know that extra weight around the waist increases the risk of a range of health conditions, such as diabetes, but this important study is helping us shine a light on how body fat around the waist could affect cancer risk.

“It is incredibly important that people are aware of the dangers of excess body fat, particularly around their waist. After not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight is the best thing people can do to help prevent cancer.”

The study also found associations between waist to hip ratio and bowel and pancreatic cancer, although these were not as strong.

Womb cancer risk grows with extra waist weight, study suggests

Tsimané of the Bolivian Amazon have world"s healthiest hearts, says study

A high carbohydrate diet of rice, plantain, manioc and corn, with a small amount of wild game and fish – plus around six hours’ exercise every day – has given the Tsimané people of the Bolivian Amazon the healthiest hearts in the world.

It may not be a life that everyone would choose. The Tsimané live in thatched huts with no electricity or modern conveniences. Their lives are spent on hunts that can last for over eight hours covering 18km for wild deer, monkeys or tapir and clearing large areas of primal forest with an axe, as well as the gentler pastime of gathering berries.

But as a result of this pre-industrial lifestyle, the Tsimané have hardly any hardening of the arteries. Heart attacks and strokes, the biggest killers in the US and Europe, are almost unknown.

The study published in the Lancet medical journal and being presented at the American College of Cardiology conference shows that an 80-year-old Tsimané man has the vascular age of an American in his mid-50s.

Researchers, who investigated the lifestyles of the Tsimané and checked out their arteries with CT scanners, say that there are lessons for those of us who live sedentary lives in urban areas and eat packaged foods.

“This study suggests that coronary atherosclerosis [hardening of the arteries] could be avoided if people adopted some elements of the Tsimané lifestyle, such as keeping their LDL cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar very low, not smoking and being physically active,” said senior cardiology author Dr Gregory S Thomas from Long Beach Memorial Medical Centre in the US.

“Most of the Tsimané are able to live their entire life without developing any coronary atherosclerosis. This has never been seen in any prior research. While difficult to achieve in the industrialized world, we can adopt some aspects of their lifestyle to potentially forestall a condition we thought would eventually effect almost all of us.”

Coronary atherosclerosis is the build-up of plaque in the arteries leading to the heart, which slows the blood flow and can cause blood clots – which may in turn lead to a heart attack. The researchers found that almost nine out of 10 of the 705 Tsimané adults who took part in the study had no risk at all of heart disease; 13% had a low risk and only 3% – 20 individuals – had moderate or high risk.

Even in old age, 65% of those aged over 75 had almost no risk and only 8% (four out of 48) had a moderate to high risk. By contrast, in the US, a study of more than 6,800 people found that half had moderate to high risk – five times as many as among the Tsimané people – and only 14% had no risk of heart disease at all.

In the Tsimané population, heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood glucose were also low. The study suggests that genetic risk is less important than lifestyle. “Over the last five years, new roads and the introduction of motorised canoes have dramatically increased access to the nearby market town to buy sugar and cooking oil,” said Dr Ben Trumble, of Arizona State University, US. “This is ushering in major economic and nutritional changes for the Tsimané people.” Those whose lifestyle is changing have higher cholesterol levels than others who stick to hunting and fishing.

Senior anthropology author Prof Hillard Kaplan, from the University of New Mexico, said the loss of subsistence diets and lifestyles could be classed as a new risk factor for vascular ageing. “We believe that components of this way of life could benefit contemporary sedentary populations,” he said.

Tsimané people are more likely to get infections than those in the US, but even so, he said, “they have a very high likelihood of living into old age.”

The researchers cannot yet say whether diet or the active lifestyle is the more important component, said Kaplan, but they want to go on to investigate that by following those of the community whose lifestyles change with exposure to the town. “My best guess is that they act and they interact,” he said.

And it could be as much the foods that the Tsimané do not eat that gives them healthy hearts as the food that they do. Their diet is high in unrefined carbohydrates (72%) with about 14% protein and it is very low in sugar and in fat – also 14%, which amounts to about 38g of fat a day including 11g of saturated fat. “In the evolutionary past, fat and dense energy in the form of sugar were in short supply,” Kaplan said.

Tsimané of the Bolivian Amazon have world"s healthiest hearts, says study