Harvard Health Content API

A CRP blood test for heart disease risk does not add much to the other information doctors use. A review of 52 previous studies found this result. The studies included 240,000 people. None of the people had cardiovascular disease. The test was helpful in less than 2% of people. A CRP test is a blood test. It measures inflammation in the body. Inflammation may lead to narrowing of blood vessels. This can increase a person’s risk for heart attack or stroke. People most likely to benefit from heart-disease screening are those at medium risk. But in that group, regular CRP tests prevented only 1 heart attack or stroke for every 400 to 500 people screened. The study was published October 4 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

People who take drugs called beta-blockers aren’t always helped by them, a study has found. The study included more than 20,000 adults. All had either stable heart disease or just risk factors for heart disease. Beta-blockers did not appear to help any of the groups. In people with risk factors only, beta-blocker treatment slightly increased the risks for heart attack, stroke and death from heart disease. The authors of the study call for randomized clinical trials to help define which patients would benefit from taking beta-blockers. The study was published October 2 in the online version of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Science News, HealthDay News and other media wrote about it.

A new virus has infected two men. One died, and the other is in critical condition. The new virus is similar to the SARS virus, researchers say. The SARS virus was identified in 2003. The new virus does not appear to spread easily from person to person. Its genes have already been examined. It is closely linked to bat viruses. But it also could have come from sheep, camels or other animals. Both men were infected in the Middle East. They were infected months apart, however. Scientists are now looking for the virus in animals.

Many kids are exposed to at least 4 hours of TV every day—even if they aren’t watching. Researchers did the study using phone interviews. They talked to 1,454 families. Each had at least one child between the ages of 8 months and 8 years. Children in the study were exposed to 4 hours of TV a day. Younger children were exposed to even more. So were African-American children and low-income children. Parents may think that having the TV on in the background is okay, even if they know that a lot of TV watching isn’t good. Experts recommend no TV for kids under 2. They say that older kids should have no more than 2 hours a day of TV, computer and video game time. The background TV study was published in the journal Pediatrics. USA Today wrote about it October 1.

Active video games can increase heart rate and energy use for kids, a small study suggests. The study included 18 children, ages 11 to 15. They were asked to play a traditional seated video game, a dance game and a boxing sports game for 15 minutes each. The dance and boxing games used the Kinect system for Xbox 360. Kinect does not use a controller, so the kids had to move while playing. Researchers measured the children’s heart rate, oxygen use and overall energy use during each game. All three increased. The children used twice as much energy for the dancing game as for the seated game. They used three times as much energy for the boxing game. The journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine published the study. HealthDay News and Reuters Health news service wrote about it September 26.

Older adults in the South take antibiotics more often than those in other regions, a new study shows. And it’s not because they get more infections. The results suggest that some of the prescriptions may not be needed, the authors said. Antibiotics are used to treat infections caused by bacteria. Excess use of antibiotics can help bacteria to develop resistance to the drugs. Then the drugs won’t work when needed. This is a growing problem around the world. The new study looked at 3 years of Medicare data on prescriptions and infection rates. About 21% of Medicare patients in the South used an antibiotic in an average 3-month period. The West had the lowest average, about 17%. Regions with more prescriptions did not have higher rates of infections that needed antibiotics. For example, the Northeast had the highest rates of bacterial pneumonia.

Knee replacement operations on older adults have risen 162% in the last 20 years, a new study finds. Many had to be repeated. Second operations such as these doubled. Medicare spends about $15,000 on each knee replacement. All of these numbers will only go up as baby boomers get older. Researchers used Medicare data for their study. Medicare patients had 243,802 knee replacements in 2010. There were 93,230 in 1991. Some people needed “revisions,” or second surgeries. The number of these procedures doubled, from 9,650 to 19,871. The average hospital stay for knee replacement was cut in half during these two decades. But there were more problems afterward for people who had revision surgeries. They were twice as likely to need a second hospital stay after surgery as patients in 1991. The Journal of the American Medical Association published the study September 26.

Three new studies strengthen links between sugar-sweetened drinks and excess weight. The New England Journal of Medicine published them online September 21. Two studies involved children. One included 224 overweight and obese teenagers. They were randomly divided into 2 groups. One group received water and diet drinks delivered to their homes for a year. They were urged to avoid sugar-sweetened drinks and got regular pep talks. The other group got no drinks or advice. After a year, teens who got the free drinks had gained less weight than those in the other group. But a year after the program ended the difference had disappeared. A second study involved younger children who drank sugar-sweetened beverages regularly. Researchers gave each child a canned drink daily. One group got sugar-sweetened drinks.