Harvard Health Content API

A new study finds that taking one type of pain reliever long-term may be risky for people with high blood pressure and heart disease. The study focused on nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Some of the most popular over-the-counter pain relievers are NSAIDs. They include ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin and others) and naproxen (Aleve, Naprosyn and others). The group also includes a prescription medicine, celecoxib (Celebrex). The study focused on 882 people who took NSAIDs regularly. They were compared with almost 22,000 people who used these drugs from time to time or never. Everyone in the study had coronary artery disease and high blood pressure. Researchers kept track of them for about 3 years. In that time, the rate of death, heart attack and stroke was 47% higher in regular NSAIDs than in those who used the drugs less or not at all.

A fake treatment (placebo) can make asthma patients feel better just as well as a real treatment, a new study suggests. But tests showed the real treatment improved breathing more. The study included 39 asthma patients. Each person visited a doctor’s office 3 times, with a few days between visits. They received treatments each time, in random order. They were treated with a standard albuterol inhaler, a fake inhaler or fake acupuncture. They also were given no treatment sometimes. People also received repeated tests of their ability to exhale. These tests showed 20% improvement with the albuterol inhaler and 7% with the other approaches. But patients thought their breathing improved about 45% to 50% with all three of the active treatments. They thought there was a 21% improvement with no treatment. The study raises many questions about the so-called placebo effect.

Too much salt increases the risk of heart attack, especially if you don’t get enough potassium, a new study finds. The study began with a survey of more than 12,000 U.S. adults. They were asked to list what they ate the day before. Then researchers kept track of them for 14 years. In that time, 433 died of heart attacks. Researchers divided the survey results into two groups. One group ate excess sodium and too little potassium. The other group ate about the same amounts of each. People in the first group were twice as likely to have heart attacks as those in the second group. Salt is the main source of sodium for most people. Eating too much sodium also increased risk for people who ate enough potassium. People who ate 5 grams of sodium a day were twice as likely to have a heart attack as those who ate 2 grams. Five grams is equal to more than 2 teaspoons of salt.

Doctors can now get special training in addiction medicine. Ten medical institutions in the United States are offering a new one-year program. The programs had to meet special requirements of the American Board of Addiction Medicine (ABAM). The goal of the program is to train doctors to recognize, diagnose and help treat people who are addicted to alcohol, drugs, pain medicines and other substances. The ABAM also wants to see addiction medicine become a medical specialty, such as pediatrics, internal medicine or dermatology. Many experts think these new training programs mean that addiction is being recognized as a physical disease because of how it affects the brain. It needs to be managed like any other chronic disease. The New York Times wrote about the story July 10.

The teen birth rate is falling, and drug use among eighth graders is rising, a new report says. The report is called “America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being 2011.” It puts together statistics from many government sources. Births among girls 15 to 17 fell for the second year. They were 21.7 per 1,000 girls in 2008. That dropped to 20.1 in 2009. That same year, 8% of eighth graders said they had used illicit drugs in the last month. This increased to 10% in 2010. In the late 1970s, about 6% of children age 6 and up were obese. That increased to 19% in 2007-2008. More children also are living in poverty and poor housing, the report says. Fewer live with a parent who is employed full-time. Asthma rates rose from 8.8% of children in 2001 to 9.6% in 2009. Reuters Health news service and HealthDay News wrote about the report July 6.

At least 20% of adults are obese in every state except Colorado, says a new report released this week. That’s up dramatically in the last 15 years. In 1995, no state had an obesity rate that high. The new report came from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It used numbers from 2010. Mississippi topped the list. About 34.4% of adults there are obese. In 2006, it was the only state where obesity topped 30%. Now a dozen states have passed that threshold. Most of them are in the South. Colorado was the leanest state. The obesity rate there was 19.8%. Race and education also affected the numbers. Obesity was 40% among African-Americans in 15 states. Among whites, it passed 30% in only 4 states. About one-third of those who did not graduate from high school were obese. That’s much higher than the rate among college graduates.

Children who have delays in talking at age 2 don’t have an increased risk of social problems later on, a study finds. The study included more than 1,600 children. Their caregivers were asked to fill out surveys about the children. They answered the surveys when the children were 2 and every few years afterward. The surveys showed that 142 children had delays in learning to talk at age 2. These children were more likely to have problems with emotions and behavior than other kids at that time. But they did not have more problems than other kids later on. The journal Pediatrics published the study online July 4. HealthDay News wrote about it.

Massage may relieve back pain better than medicine or physical therapy, new research suggests. The study included 401 people with long-lasting low back pain. They were randomly divided into 3 groups. One group received “usual care.” This included as medicines and physical therapy. The other 2 groups received massage an hour a week for 10 weeks. One group received structural massage. This kind of massage focuses on pain-related back muscles and ligaments. The other group got relaxation massage, also called Swedish massage. This type aims for overall body relaxation. After 10 weeks, about 1 out of 3 people who received massage said their pain was much better or gone. Only 1 out of 25 in the usual-care group reported this result. People who got massage also tended to use less medicine than the usual-care group. They were more active and spent fewer days in bed.