Health briefing

A round-up of other health news in brief

Chocolate a bitter pill for blood pressure patients 

A PRESCRIPTION of eating chocolate every day might sound appetising, but researchers in Australia found that some patients wouldn’t swallow it as a long-term medicine. Dark chocolate is better at reducing high blood pressure than a placebo, according to the group at the University of Adelaide, which recently analysed 15 scientific trials published in the literature.

However, the researchers also published their own study last year of 36 people with prehypertension, finding that eating either flavonol-rich chocolate each day or taking a daily capsule of lycopene- rich tomato extract did not have a blood pressure lowering effect there.

But what came out in the wash during that trial was that about half of the participants in the chocolate group found it difficult to eat 50g of dark chocolate each day for eight weeks.

Writing in a letter to the British Medical Journal last week, the Adelaide researchers pointed out that “ . . . the practicability of chocolate as a long-term treatment is debatable. We found that 50g daily of 70 per cent cocoa chocolate was significantly less acceptable to participants as a long-term treatment for high blood pressure than one capsule daily of placebo or tomato extract.”

Participants in the chocolate arm of the study, published in BMC’s Complementary and Alternative Medicine, cited unacceptable taste, richness and concerns about fat content as reasons for their reluctance to eat the chocolate – although a follow-up three months after the trial had ended found participants were consuming more dark chocolate.

Monitoring system can detect stillbirth

SCIENTISTS from the University of Ulster, QUB and the Royal Jubilee Maternity Hospital, Belfast are developing a high-tech mobile foetal surveillance system, which could help prevent stillbirth by alerting doctors when a baby’s life is at risk. Many bereaved mothers say that in the days leading up to the stillbirth, the pattern of their baby’s movements seemed to decrease. Careful monitoring of a baby’s movements in the womb could provide an early warning if a baby is at risk.

Would you like a statin with that cheeseburger?

FAST-FOOD OUTLETS should hand out free cholesterol-lowering statin drugs to their customers to “neutralise” the heart risks of eating fatty foods like burgers and fries, a group of British scientists has suggested.

But a few experts say you might want to ask your server to hold the statin at this point.

In a study published in the American Journal of Cardiology, scientists from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London calculated that the reduction in heart disease risk offered by a statin could offset the increase in risk from eating a cheeseburger and a milkshake.

“Statins don’t cut out all of the unhealthy effects of a burger and fries. It’s better to avoid fatty food altogether. But we’ve worked out that in terms of your likelihood of having a heart attack, taking a statin can reduce your risk to more or less the same degree as a fast food meal increases it,” said Dr Darrel Francis, who led the research team.

“When people engage in risky behaviours like driving or smoking, they’re encouraged to take measures that minimise their risk, like wearing a seatbelt or choosing cigarettes with filters. Taking a statin is a rational way of lowering some of the risks of eating a fatty meal.”

Still, Peter Weissberg, medical director at the British Heart Foundation (BHF) health charity, said Dr Francis’s idea should not be taken too literally. He urged people to focus on maintaining a good diet and taking exercise to keep their hearts healthy. “Statins are a vital medicine for people with – or at high risk of developing – heart disease,” he said. “They are not a magic bullet.”