source: By Anne Harding, Health.com

(Health.com) -- Exercising or having sex just about triples a person's risk of heart attack in the hours immediately afterward, especially if the person does those activities infrequently, according to a new analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Heart patients shouldn't abstain from sex or forgo exercise based on this finding, however. Although a threefold increase in heart-attack risk sounds scary, the overall likelihood of having a heart attack after working out or making love is still very low -- on the order of 3 in 1,000,000, as opposed to 1 in 1,000,000.

"Definitely, one should not interpret our findings as meaning that physical activity or sexual activity are dangerous or harmful," says one of the study's authors, Issa Dahabreh, M.D., a researcher at Tufts Medical Center's Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies, in Boston, Massachusetts. "The effect at an individual level is small."

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Moreover, the study participants who were more physically active appeared to be less susceptible to a heart attack following intercourse or a workout.

"People who exercise regularly have a much smaller increase in risk, if any," Dr. Dahabreh says.

Numerous studies have suggested that physical activity, including sex, can trigger a heart attack or cardiac arrest, but the magnitude of the risk has been unclear. To arrive at an estimate, Dahabreh and his coauthor reanalyzed data from 14 such studies dating back to the 1980s.

All of the studies used a so-called case-crossover design, in which the participants' activities in the one- to two-hour period leading up to their heart attacks were compared with their usual routines. If physical activity or sex were more common during the pre-heart-attack period than at other times, it would suggest that they triggered the attack.

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In the hours after exercising, the researchers found, a person's risk of heart attack increased about 3.5 times, while his or her risk increased about 2.7 times within two hours of having sex. Physical activity also quintupled the risk of sudden death due to cardiac arrest.

However, the risk of heart attack or cardiac death was reduced by 45% and 30%, respectively, for each additional workout the study participants completed in a typical week.

Although the overall (or absolute) risk of heart attack after sex or exercise is "very, very small," Dahabreh says, the findings do suggest that sedentary people who want to get in shape should increase their level of physical activity gradually to avoid undue stress on their hearts. (The American Heart Association makes the same recommendation.)

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Geoffrey Tofler, M.D., a professor of preventive cardiology at the University of Sydney Medical School, in Australia, stresses that it is extremely rare for sex or exercise to trigger a heart attack.

"If a healthy 50-year-old person has [a] one-in-a-million chance of having a heart attack in any given hour, tripling the risk will still only make three chances in a million of a heart attack in that hour," says Tofler, a co-author of one of the analyzed studies whowas not involved in the new research.

source: By Masuzyo Chakwe

WORLD leaders need to step up their commitment and contributions to meet the goal of diagnosing and treating one million people with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) between 2011 and 2015, says global health organisations.

Commenting on the World TB Day which fell yesterday, the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the Stop TB Partnership called on world leaders to step up their commitment and contributions.

WHO yesterday released a report titled ‘Towards Universal Access to Diagnosis and Treatment of MDR-TB and XDR-TB by 2015’, which presents progress in the MDR-TB response in the countries with the highest burden of drug-resistant TB.
WHO director general Dr Margaret Chan said many countries had made progress, but despite the recent scale up in efforts, the world needed to do much more to get care to all MDR-TB patients who need it.

“We cannot allow MDR-TB to spread unchecked,” she said.

Dr Chan said leaving MDR-TB untreated increased the risk of spreading drug resistant strains of tuberculosis and WHO estimates that there would be more than two million new cases of MDR-TB between 2011 and 2015.

It stated that it was anticipated that the Global Fund would provide 84 per cent of all international investments in tuberculosis in 2011.

However, it stated that both domestic and international resources need to be scaled up to cope with MDR-TB and continue to make progress in the fight against TB.

Global Fund executive director Professor Michel Kazatchkine said MDR-TB was a threat to all countries as it is difficult and expensive to treat.

“Unless we make an extraordinary effort to tackle this problem, our ability to finance and secure continued progress against TB in general will be threatened” said Prof Kazatchkine.

United Nations secretary general’s special envoy to stop TB Dr Jorge Sampaio said it was time for countries with rapidly growing economies and a heavy burden of MDR-TB to step up their commitment and financing for their own MDR-TB programmes.

Dr Sampaio said several had the capacity to show new leadership on south-south cooperation and aid to neighbouring countries that are also affected.
And Stop TB Partnership executive secretary Dr Lucica Ditiu said the Global Fund's success could be measured in the number of lives that had been saved through care provided by the TB programmes it finances.

“Every TB patient should have access to proper care. We advocate on behalf of millions of patients worldwide and our strong partners such as WHO and the Global Fund. To reach a million people with effective care for MDR-TB over the next five years, we will need to work closely with all partners, especially with affected communities,” said Dr Ditiu.

MDR-TB is a form of tuberculosis that fails to respond to standard first-line drugs.

source:sunstar.com.ph

AS REPORTS of Japan possibly slipping into recession surface, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) refused to be alarmed and instead see it as an opportunity to send in more overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).

“On the contrary, we think there will be more demands for Filipino nurses and caregivers since the recovery and rehabilitation in Japan will be on a massive level,” said Cao.

Aside from caregivers and nurses, he said the rehabilitation program will also result in the need for more construction workers.

The labor official, however, admitted that there is indeed a possibility that Japan slipping into recession could result to some job losses.

“It may have an impact on the OFWs in that sense,” said Cao while refusing to speculate on possible job losses.

Last Monday, international economists expressed fears that Japan's already weak economy is in danger of slipping back into recession in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that hit the country last Friday.

The POEA chief, for his part, believes that Japan slipping into a recession may be unlikely since it is considered as the world’s third largest economy.

“We all know about the resiliency of the Japanese economy so we hope and pray that they will be able to recover immediately,” said Cao.

POEA records show that there are now some 225,000 OFWs working in Japan as of last year. (AMN/Sunnex)

source: By Gilbert P. Felongco, Correspondent

Some 8,000 show commitment to profession by remaining in restive Libya