E-cigarette risks

E-cigarettes may be better than regular ones but are not exactly good for health. While cigarette smoking triples the risk of a heart attack, regular use of e-cigarettes doubles the risk of a heart attack. The study was recently published in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Incidentally, the study found that about 66 per cent of those who smoke e-cigarettes also have an occasional smoke and in them the risk of heart attack is five times that of a non-smoker.

"If you switch [from cigarettes to e-cigarettes], it's almost the same as continuing to smoke," says lead author Stanton A. Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, US. "You have the residual risk of being a smoker compounded by the risk of being an e-cigarette user. The way to get rid of the risk is to stop."

Don't move and shake

Children whose families move homes frequently may be at increased risk for serious psychiatric illness, a study published in the journal, JAMA Psychiatry, found. Moving once or twice during childhood did not seem to have much of an effect but moving once a year for four or five consecutive years put the children at risk. The more often children under 19 years moved houses, the greater their risk for psychosis. The largest effect was found among those aged between 16 and 19.

Parkinson's cardio link

Poor cardiovascular health may be linked to an increased risk for Parkinson's, a new study published in the journal, PLOS Medicine, has found.

Researchers looked for five cardiovascular risk factors that define the metabolic syndrome: abdominal obesity, high triglycerides, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and high glucose readings. The more risk factors a person had, the greater the chance of his or her getting Parkinson's disease. Compared with having none of the risk factors, having all five was associated with a 66 per cent increased risk. The association was particularly strong for people over 65.

IVF babies prone to high BP

Children born by assisted reproductive technologies - such as IVF - may be at risk for high blood pressure in adolescence, Swiss researchers report. Previous studies in both animals and humans have suggested that conception by assisted technology is associated with premature ageing of the vascular system. One result of this may be hypertension. A study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology included 54 healthy boys and girls, average age 16, who were conceived through fertility treatments. Researchers compared them with 43 naturally conceived controls matched for age and sex. Average blood pressure was significantly higher in the assisted reproductive technology group.