Middle-aged adults who get too little sleep are more likely to develop high blood pressure. Missing just one hour of sleep a night over five years raises risk of high blood pressure by 37 percent.

"People who didn't sleep as much were at greater risk of developing hypertension over five years," Kristen Knutson of the University of Chicago reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine on Monday.

Adults typically should sleep between seven and nine hours a night, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Sleeping too little has different negative health affects depending on age. In children, lack of sleep has been shown to raise rates of obesity, depression and high blood pressure. In older adults, it increases the risk of falls. And in the middle-aged, it raises the risk of infections, heart disease, stroke, cancer and high blood pressure.

The team studied 578 adults with an average age of 40. They took blood pressure readings and measured how long each person slept. Only 1 percent slept eight hours or more.

The study participants on average slept six hours. Each hour of lost sleep raised the risk of high blood pressure.

"If you compare six hours of sleep to five hours of sleep, the five-hour sleepers will have 37 percent greater odds of developing hypertension," Knutson said.

Men, especially African American men, slept less then Caucasian women.

"These two observations suggested the intriguing possibility that the well-documented higher blood pressure in African Americans and men might be partly related to sleep duration," Knutson and colleagues wrote.

Please see: http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/169/11/1055

Labels: 6 hours, cancer, despression, fungal infections, heart disease, high blook pressure, kate cooper, obesity, Sleep, snore, stroke

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reported that doctors are not consistently recognizing histoplasmosis and other invasive fungal infections in patients taking Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha (TNF-α) blockers: Cimzia, Enbrel, Humira, Remicade and Simponi. TNF-α blockers are commonly used to treat moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and ankylosing spondylitis or chronic arthritis in the spine.

The failure to recognize fungal infections has resulted in delays in appropriate antifungal treatment, sometimes even resulting in death.

Centocor Ortho Biotech and FDA recently reminded healthcare professionals of these risks associated with the TNF-α blocker Simponi. Centorcor Ortho Biotech of Horsham, PA manufactures Simponi.

Patients who develop an infection, including any persistent or reoccurring infections should have their Simponi or other TNF-α blocker discontinued. Empiric antifungal therapy should be considered until the source of the infection is identified. It may be appropriate to consult an infectious diseases specialist.

Patients and health care professionals are encouraged to report and to monitor signs of infection and be closely monitored during and after treatment with TNF-α blockers for invasive fungal infections. Symptoms include fever, malaise, weight loss, sweats, cough and dyspnea, pulmonary infiltrates on X-ray or serious systemic illness.

Patients who reside in or travel to regions where fungal infections are endemic like the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys and southwestern United States should be tested for invasive fungal infections if they develop a serious systemic illness.

All adverse events should be reported to Centocor Ortho Biotech or the FDA. It is important that all adverse events potentially associated with Simponi be reported so that the drug’s profile is updated appropriately as post-approval experience is gathered.

Centocor Ortho Biotech Inc. can be contact at 1-800-457-6399.

The FDA can be contacted via:
Online at www.fda.gov/medwatch/report.htm
Phone at 1-800-FDA-1088
Fax at 1-800-FDA-0178, using the MedWatch Form 3500
(available at www.fda.gov/medwatch/ getforms.htm)
Mail, using the postage-paid MedWatch Form 3500 (see above), to MedWatch, 5600
Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD 20852-9787

For more information please see: http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/safety/2009/SIMPONI_DHCP%20letter_May09.pdf
http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/safety/2009/safety09.htm#Simponi

Labels: ankylosing spondylitits, arthritis, Cimzia, enbrel, FDA, fungal infections, humira, posriatic arthritis, remicade, rheumatoid arthritis, Simponi, spine, tnf-a