Releases Saturday 9 November 2002
No 7372 Volume 325
Please remember to credit the BMJ as source when publicising
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(1) POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE DOES NOT
AFFECT CANCER SURVIVAL
(2) RISKS TO SURVIVAL BEGIN EARLY IN LIFE
(3) SCHIZOPHRENIA
DRUGS INCREASE RISK OF
CARDIAC ARREST
(1) POSITIVE MENTAL
ATTITUDE DOES NOT
AFFECT CANCER SURVIVAL
(Influence of psychological coping
on survival and
recurrence in people with cancer:
systematic review)
http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/325/7372/1066
There is little evidence to support the
belief that a person's
mental attitude affects his or her chances
of surviving
cancer, finds a study in this week's BMJ.
Researchers reviewed 26 studies on the
effect of
psychological coping styles (including
fighting spirit,
helplessness/hopelessness, denial, and
avoidance) and
survival from or recurrence of cancer.
They found little convincing evidence that
coping styles
play an important part in survival from
or recurrence of
cancer. Good evidence is also lacking
to support the view
that "acceptance," "fatalism," or "denial"
have an important
influence on outcome.
Although the relation is biologically plausible,
there is at
present little scientific basis for the
popular belief that
psychological coping styles have an important
influence on
overall or event-free survival in patients
with cancer, say
the authors.
People with cancer should not feel pressurised
into
adopting particular coping styles to improve
survival or
reduce the risk of recurrence, they conclude.
Contact:
Mark Petticrew, Associate Director, MRC
Social and Public Health Sciences Unit,
Glasgow,
Scotland
Email: mark{at}msoc.mrc.gla.ac.uk
(2) RISKS TO SURVIVAL BEGIN EARLY IN LIFE
(Mortality in adults aged 26-54 years
related to
socioeconomic conditions in childhood
and adulthood:
post war birth cohort study)
http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/325/7372/1076
Adult death rates are higher among people
growing up in
poor living conditions, finds a study
in this week's BMJ.
Researchers in London set out to test whether
socioeconomic conditions in childhood
and early
adulthood have influenced the survival
of British people
born in the immediate post war era. They
examined
premature death (between 26 and 54 years
of age) in
2,132 women and 2,322 men born in March
1946 in
relation to socioeconomic conditions in
childhood and
adulthood.
Study members whose father's occupation
was manual at
age 4, who lived in the worst housing,
or who received the
poorest care in childhood had double the
death rate during
adulthood of those living in the best
conditions.
Those for whom socioeconomic disadvantage
continued
into early adulthood were between three
and five times
more likely to die than those in the most
advantageous
conditions.
This group is still relatively young, and
continued follow up
will allow us to see if the effects observed
before 55 years
weaken, remain the same, or strengthen
as the group ages,
conclude the authors.
Contact:
Diana Kuh, Epidemiologist, Medical Research
Council
National Survey of Health and Development,
Department
of Epidemiology and Public Health, Royal
Free and
University College London, UK
Email: d.kuh{at}ucl.ac.uk
(3) SCHIZOPHRENIA
DRUGS INCREASE RISK OF
CARDIAC ARREST
(Cardiac arrest and ventricular arrhythmia
in patients
taking antipsychotic drugs: cohort
study using
administrative data)
http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/325/7372/1070
Patients with schizophrenia who take antipsychotic
drugs
are more likely to have a cardiac arrest
than
non-schizophrenic patients, finds a study
in this week's
BMJ.
Using data from three US Medicaid programmes,
researchers compared the frequency of
cardiac events
among patients with treated schizophrenia
and control
patients with psoriasis or glaucoma. They
also compared
the cardiac risk of different antipsychotic
drugs
(thioridazine, haloperidol, risperidone,
and clozapine).
They found that patients with treated schizophrenia
had
higher rates of cardiac events than controls.
Overall, the risk with thioridazine was
no worse than that
with haloperidol. Thioridazine may carry
a greater risk than
haloperidol at high doses, although this
finding could be
due to chance, say the authors.
To reduce cardiac risk, patients requiring
thioridazine
should be treated with the lowest dose
possible to treat
their symptoms, they conclude.
Contact:
Sean Hennessy,
Assistant Professor, Center for Clinical
Epidemiology and
Biostatistics, University of Pensylvania
School of
Medicine, Philadelphia, USA
Email: shenness{at}cceb.med.upenn.edu
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(http://www.eurekalert.org)
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