How fast can you run a mile?

Your answer may predict your risk of a heart attack or stroke in the next decade or so, according to two new studies.

UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers say that how fast a middle-age person can run a mile can help predict the risk of dying of heart attack or stroke decades later for men and could be an early indicator of cardiovascular disease for women.

The researchers analyzed the heart disease risk of 45 to 65 year-old men based on fitness levels and other traditional risk factors such as age, blood pressure, cholesterol and smoking habits.

They found that fitness levels among middleaged men show marked differences in risk for cardiovascular disease.

For instance, a 55-year-old man runs a mile in 15 minutes has a 30 percent lifetime risk of developing heart disease. In contrast, a 55-year-old who runs a mile in eight minutes has a lifetime risk of less than 10 percent.

“Heart disease tends to cluster at older ages, but if you want to prevent it, our research suggests that the prescription for prevention needs to occur earlier – when a person is in his 40s and 50s,” said Dr. Jarett Berry, assistant professor of internal medicine and a corresponding author on both studies.

According to the results, a high fitness level can lower the risk of heart disease even when other risk factors are present.

Heart disease is the number one cause of death in industrialized nations.  It is especially lethal for women, whose risk for heart disease is hard to assess and rises dramatically as they age.

The fitness test, researchers said, were particularly helpful in identifying women at risk for heart disease over the long term.

The studies mark the first time fitness levels have been used to attempt to predict risk for heart disease.

They were published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Circulation.

While it’s important for young women to get vaccinated against HPV, it’s equally important that they not be lulled into a false sense of security: Women who receive the HPV vaccination will still need to get screened for cervical cancer in the future.

British researchers found an alarming lack of clarity among both parents and girls concerning the link between the HPV vaccine and the need for future cervical screening.

In some cases, parents provided their consent for daughters to receive the vaccine because they falsely believed that it would render cervical screening unnecessary.

The researchers also found that there was a significant lack of awareness about cervical screening among vaccination-aged girls.

The truth is, while the HPV vaccine is effective against the two most common high risk HPV types (16 and 18), it does not protect against all types of high risk HPV.  The vaccine offers only 70 percent protection against cervical cancer, making it imperative for women to still undergo cervical screening as they age.

“Cervical screening can prevent around 34 percent of cervical cancers in women in their 30s, rising to 75 percent in women in their 50s and 60s,” stressed Hazel Nunn, Cancer Research UK’s senior health information manager.  “Women should be reminded of the crucial role of screening in the fight against cervical cancer.”

The study was presented Thursday at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society of Academic Primary Care.

Women who smoke heavily are at greater risk of chronic pain, according to a new study.

More than 6000 women were surveyed on their smoking habits and different symptoms of chronic pain, such as fibromyalgia, sciatica, and pain in the neck, back, joints and head.

The results indicated that smokers and former smokers were significantly more likely to report at least one chronic pain symptom compared to nonsmokers.

Former smokers were 20 percent more likely to report pain, occasional smokers were 68 percent more likely and daily smokers were 104 percent more likely.

Furthermore, daily smoking was associated more strongly with chronic pain than old age, low education and obesity.

The researchers say acute pain is typically a protective response and speculate that perhaps female smokers experience acute pain that develops into chronic pain because their normal protection and mechanisms are damaged by exposure to smoke.

The researchers recommend women quit smoking to help relieve pain.

Women in search of a job may want to consider computer or vocational training to increase their chances of landing an interview, according to a new study.

Researchers analyzed the resumes of older women to find which characteristics resulted in the most success in securing job interviews.

The top characteristic that led to an interview for entry-level jobs was vocational or computer training, the researchers reported.

For the study, the researchers looked at the effects of age, job-related experience, vocational training, outside activities, and length of gaps in work history by sending varying resumes to more than 3500 employers in the country.

The employers represented various fields of industry and the jobs listed were all entry-level positions requiring up to one year of post-high school education and combined work experience.

“Employers focus almost exclusively on educational background in the entry-level jobs studied,” said study researchers Emily Johnson and Joanna Lahey.

“The benefits of adding volunteer experiences, hobbies, or involvement in sports may help in some communities more than others, and while they may not hurt the potential for an interview, these activities do not guarantee an interview for an entry-level job position,” the researchers added.

The results run in contradiction to some career guides, which place greater emphasis on outside activities like volunteering or playing in recreational sports leagues.

The researchers hope their findings will encourage middle-age women to stay current with today’s sought-after skills, such as vocational training, to increase their chances of securing a job.

“Job seekers may be helped in their decision making processes by knowledge of employer demand and specifically by knowledge of the items employers are looking for that could make employees more attractive,” the researchers said.

Corresponding with earlier findings, the study also reported a negative relationship between age and hiring.

The study was published in the Journal of Career Development (JCD), published by SAGE.

Voices can reveal a lot about a person, like age, gender or mood. However, new research challenges previous assertions that women’s voices can broadcast certain cues to men about how close they are to ovulation.

While prior studies have merely studied women’s voices in two phases: high conception risk vs. low conception risk, this latest study looked at the variation in women’s voices through their entire menstrual cycle.

The results indicated that women do speak with the highest tone just prior to ovulation (which some studies have associated with attractiveness); however, just after ovulation the tone raises again to levels indistinguible from pre-ovulation, making voice a very poor mating cue.

Furthermore, men involved in the study showed only a very slight preference for pre-ovulation voices compared to voices recorded during ovulation.

The study researchers therefore concluded that women’s voices do not provide reliable information about reproductive timing.

The study was published in the journal PLoS ONE.

Call it a generational gap?

New data indicates that people born after World War II are more likely to binge drink and develop alcoholism.

The research, in particular, points to women at being increasingly at risk for alcohol abuse issues.

Additionally, while the trend was particularly strong in the United States, it was not evident at all in Australia and Western Europe.

The review is one of the first to compile data from individual studies on alcohol use disorders and provide evidence that problem drinking among young women is still increasing, an important finding for public health professionals to take into account.

Because of differences in body size and composition, a woman will become more intoxicated than a man consuming the same quantity of alcohol. Women who drink heavily are also at greater risk of sexual violence and chronic diseases than men.

Based on the results, the researchers recommend that specific prevention and intervention policies be developed to target young women specifically.

The study will be published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

It was funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.