A round-up of this week's other health news in short ...
Aspirin could prevent liver damage
A daily dose of aspirin could prevent liver damage, a new study has claimed.
Millions of people suffering alcohol abuse and obesity could reduce their chances of harming the body’s biggest internal organ with the common painkiller, American professors have said.
Scientists from the Journal of Clinical Investigation said tests on mice showed aspirin reduced death caused by an overdose of acetaminophen, best known as paracetamol.
Wajahat Mehal from Yale School of Medicine said: “Many agents such as drugs and alcohol cause liver damage, and we have found two ways to block a central pathway responsible for such liver injury. Our strategy is to use aspirin on a daily basis to prevent liver injury.”
Eating less may delay dementia
Eating less may help older people improve their memory and prevent, or delay, the onset of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, according to a German study published last night.
The findings suggest that simple lifestyle changes could help treat dementia and confirm benefits previously shown in animals, said Agnes Floel, a neurologist at the University of Munster in Germany, who led the study.
An estimated 24 million people worldwide have the memory loss and other symptoms that signal Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
Rates of cot death quadruple in US
Rates of sudden infant death from suffocation or strangulation have quadrupled in the past 20 years in the United States, most, apparently, from parents sleeping with their babies, researchers said last night.
Black male babies are the most affected but it is not clear why.
The trend is clear despite successful campaigns to prevent sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) by putting babies to sleep on their backs instead of their tummies, according to a report in the journal Pediatrics.