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Telmisartan, a medication used to lower blood pressure, reduced the outcome of cardiovascular death, heart attack or stroke in people who are unable to tolerate a widely available and effective standard treatment, according to a new study.

High impact activities such as jumping and skipping that can easily be incorporated into warm-ups before sports and physical education classes, have been shown to benefit bone health in adolescents.

Premature infants whose mothers smoked during pregnancy may be at even higher risk for sudden infant death syndrome than preemies whose mothers did not smoke, according to new research. In the first-ever experimental study to compare the breathing reflexes of preemies of smokers versus non-smokers, researchers found that babies whose mothers had smoked showed a number of signs of impaired respiratory function.

Daytime sleeping during a rehabilitation stay predicts less functional recovery for older adults, with effects lasting as long as three months.

The inability to detect changes in skin temperature may contribute to the poor sleep of older adults who have insomnia. A new study shows that the subjective interpretation of temperature change is decreased in older adults, particularly those who suffer from insomnia.

Objectively measured heavy snoring is an independent risk factor for early carotid atherosclerosis, which may progress to be associated with stroke. The prevalence of carotid atherosclerosis, a leading cause of stroke, increases significantly with the severity of snoring.

A neuroimaging study has found that cognitive processes related to verbal fluency are compromised in people with insomnia despite the absence of a behavioral deficit. These specific brain function alterations can be reversed, however, through non-pharmacological treatment with sleep therapy.

Noninvasively measuring liver stiffness with transient elastography accurately diagnoses patients with late-stage liver disease, reports a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Lifestyle and risk factor results clearly demonstrate a challenging gap between what is recommended in scientific guidelines and what is achieved in daily practice in high risk individuals in primary prevention of CVD. Primary prevention needs a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach involving the high-risk population, their GP’s and other health professionals, a health insurance system dedicated to prevention and all this complemented by a population strategy involving the community at large, according to experts.

Childhood overweight and obesity are serious, large-scale, global, public health concerns and the number of children affected is still increasing every year. As the treatment of overweight and obesity is rarely effective, its prevention has priority today.