Health check-up

A weekly round-up of health news from around the world.

Skipping builds bones

Skipping and jumping can help teenagers build stronger bones, Australian research shows.

A study by Griffith University has shown that 10 minutes of high impact exercise warm-up twice a week improves bone and muscle strength significantly more than a standard exercise warm-up.

Physiotherapist Ben Weeks said the warm-up, which included tuck jumps, star jumps, side lunges and skipping with gradually increasing complexity and repetitions, was specifically designed to apply a bone-stimulating mechanical load on the skeleton.

Pupils worked up to about 300 jumps per session by the end of the study.

Boys in the bone-friendly warm-up group improved whole body bone mass, while the girls' bone mass specifically improved at the hip and spine.

"Eighty percent of bone mass is accrued in the first 20 years and especially around puberty due to the circulating hormones," Mr Weeks said.

"This study targets a window of opportunity in adolescence to maximise peak bone mass with high-intensity, weight-bearing activity."

He said larger studies were required to determine whether the beneficial effects could persist into adulthood and reduce the risk of future bone fractures.

Heart disease worse in Asia

Indians and Sri Lankans living in Australia have higher rates of diabetes and develop heart disease when they are younger and thinner, a study shows.

A study by the Jean Hailes Foundation analysed disease rates among different ethnic groups in Australia and found a concerning trend among south Asians.

They developed heart disease at the average age of 52 compared with 55 among Anglo Australians, and at a body mass index (BMI) of 26, compared with 29.

They also had more than double the diagnosed diabetes of white Australians.

"There are approximately 200,000 Sri Lankans and Indians living in Australia with a high concentration living in Melbourne," said study co-ordinator Sabrina Gupta.

"Their risk of heart disease is three to four times higher than Anglo communities and 20 times higher than Japanese communities."

Standard drugs OK

People who develop pneumonia do not need expensive, broad-spectrum antibiotics to combat their illness, according to a study that aims to slow the spread of superbugs.

A survey of hospitals in Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland has found only 5% of pneumonia patients had infections caused by organisms that could not be successfully treated with bulk-standard penicillin.

Lead researcher Dr Patrick Charles, an Austin Health infectious diseases consultant, said the results showed the more expensive antibiotics were rarely needed.

"It shows that Australian doctors should resist the push which is occurring in some parts of the world - particularly the US - to prescribe broad-spectrum antibiotics to treat essentially all possible causes," Dr Charles said.

He said the more frequently these broad-spectrum antibiotics were used, the more likely it was that bacteria would be become resistant to them.

"The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens is one of the biggest threats to Australian healthcare standards and is closely linked to the inappropriate use of antibiotics," Dr Charles said.

"By continuing to use more traditional antibiotics to treat most cases of pneumonia, Australian doctors can limit or delay the emergence of more resistant strains of bacteria."

Vitamin D deficiency linked to death

Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to a 26% greater risk of death in men and women, according to a US study confirming the importance of this essential nutrient.

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore, Maryland, studied 13,000 initially healthy men and women from 1994 to 2000, comparing the mortality rate between those with low and normal levels of vitamin D in the blood.

They found that of the 1800 people who died by December 31, 2000 - 700 from cardiovascular diseases - 400 were deficient in vitamin D, which translated to a 26% increased risk of death.

The number of heart disease-related deaths was insufficient to establish a cause-and-effect link to vitamin D deficiency, the researchers said in the study published in the latest issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

However, the study "does highlight a trend, with other studies linking shortages of vitamin D to increased rates of breast cancer and depression in the elderly", the researchers said.