Health briefs

Grains help heart

Men who eat more whole-grain breakfast cereals may have a reduced risk of heart failure, according to a report in the Oct. 22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Lifetime risk of heart failure is estimated at one in five for both men and women age 40. Studies have suggested that the risk of hypertension, coronary heart disease, high blood cholesterol and mortality can be reduced with a diet rich in grain products.

Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard Medical School analyzed the link between breakfast cereal intake and new cases of heart failure among 21,376 men (average age 53.7) in the Physician's Health Study I. Cereal intake was estimated by using a food frequency questionnaire and incident heart failure was assessed by annual follow-up questionnaires for an average of 19.6 years.

During follow-up, 1,018 of the participants experienced heart failure across all cereal-intake levels. They found higher intake of whole grain breakfast cereals is associated with a lower risk of heart failure, perhaps due to the beneficial effects of whole grains on risk factors such as hypertension, heart attack, diabetes and obesity.

Fetal cells protect

Women who bear children have a reduced risk of developing breast cancer. Researchers at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center believe they have identified a reason: fetal cells "transplanted" to the mother before birth. Their findings are presented in the October issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

The ability of cells from a growing fetus to take up long-term residence within the mother is a phenomenon called fetal microchimerism. The researchers say that while fetal microchimerism has been implicated as a mechanism of autoimmune disease, it may also benefit mothers by putting the immune system on alert for malignant cells to destroy. They recruited 82 women, 35 of whom had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Approximately two-thirds of the women studied have had children, and more than half of the participants had given birth to at least one son. The researchers took blood samples and searched for male DNA.

Of the women with breast cancer, only five had male DNA in their bloodstream. In all, about 14 percent of all women in the breast cancer group had male DNA in their bloodstream compared to 43 percent of women in the non-breast cancer group.