Statins are good for love life
Statins are associated with a significant improvement in erectile function, a fact researchers hope will encourage men who need statins to reduce their risk of heart attack to take them, according to research to be presented at the American College of Cardiology's 63rd Annual Scientific Session. Erectile dysfunction is common in older men, especially among those with cardiovascular risk factors where cholesterol-lowering statins are frequently prescribed. Previous research has suggested a negative association between statin therapy and testosterone levels, leading to questions about the effects of these widely used medications on the quality of erection.
Concussion may encourage suicide
Teenagers who have suffered a traumatic brain injury such as a concussion are at ‘significantly greater odds' of attempting suicide, being bullied and engaging in a variety of high-risk behaviour, a new study has found. They are also more likely to become bullies themselves, to have sought counseling through a crisis help-line or to have been prescribed medication for anxiety, depression or both, said Dr Gabriela Ilie, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral fellow at St Michael's Hospital. They have higher odds of damaging property, breaking and entering, taking a car without permission, selling drugs, running away from home, setting a fire, getting into a fight at school or carrying or being threatened by a weapon, she said in a paper published today in the journal Plus One.
Milestone in brown fat research
The first MRI scan to show ‘brown fat' in a living adult could prove to be an essential step towards a new wave of therapies to aid the fight against diabetes and obesity. Brown fat has become a hot topic for scientists due its ability to use energy and burn calories, helping to keep weight in check. Understanding the brown fat tissue and how it can be used to such ends is of growing interest in the search to help people suffering from obesity or at a high risk of developing diabetes. Dr Thomas Barber, from the Department of Metabolic and Vascular Health at Warwick Medical School, explained, “This is an exciting area of study that requires further research and discovery. The potential is there for us to develop safe and effective ways of activating this brown fat to promote weight loss and increase energy expenditure — but we need more data to be able to get to that point.”
Anti-distraction system discovered
Psychologists have made a brain-related discovery that could revolutionise doctors' perception and treatment of attention-deficit disorders. This discovery opens up the possibility that environmental and/or genetic factors may hinder or suppress a specific brain activity that the researchers have identified as helping us prevent distraction.The Journal of Neuroscience has just published a paper about the discovery by John McDonald, an associate professor of psychology and his doctoral student John Gaspar, who made the discovery during his master's thesis research. This is the first study to reveal our brains rely on an active suppression mechanism to avoid being distracted by salient irrelevant information when we want to focus on a particular item or task.
Your partner knows bed-secret
There is no point faking it in bed because chances are your sexual partner will be able to tell. A study found that men and women are equally perceptive of their partners' levels of sexual satisfaction. The study identified sexual communication and ability to recognise emotions as important factors that predict accuracy in gauging one partner's sexual satisfaction.The study was published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior this month. “We found that, on average, both men and women have fairly accurate and unbiased perceptions of their partners' sexual satisfaction,” said Fallis, the study's lead author.