Preventing the development of hypertension, obesity and diabetes in mid-life -- between the age of 45 and 55 years -- can result in an 86 per cent lower risk of heart failure throughout the remainder of life, says a research.

Millions of people worldwide currently suffer from heart failure as well as face a significantly reduced quality of life and higher mortality rate.

The study found that hypertension, obesity and diabetes -- major risk factors as well as highly prevalent in individuals -- are preventable risk factors for heart failure, the researchers said.

Further, people with diabetes were found to have a particularly strong association with shorter heart failure-free survival, as those without diabetes lived on average between 8.6 and 10.6 years longer without heart failure.

Men at age 45 years without any of the three risk factors lived an average of 10.6 years longer free of heart failure, while women at age 45 without any of the three risk factors lived an average of 14.9 years longer without heart failure.

"The study adds to the understanding of how individual and aggregate risk factor levels, specifically in middle age, affect incident heart failure risk over the remaining lifespan," said John T. Wilkins from the Northwestern University at Evanston, in Illinois, in the US.

Prevention of hypertension, obesity and diabetes by ages 45 and 55 years may substantially prolong heart failure-free survival, decrease heart failure-related morbidity and reduce the public health impact of heart failure, the researchers noted.

The study was published in the journal JACC Heart Failure.

According to new study, improper sleep may worsen the kidney function and may lead to kidney failure.

The findings that will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2016 at McCormick Place in Chicago suggested that not getting enough sleep was linked with worsening kidney function in patients with chronic kidney disease.

Although there is increasing evidence that sleep disorders are common in individuals with CKD, its link with CKD progression is unknown. To investigate, Ana C. Ricardo, MD (University of Illinois at Chicago) and her colleagues examined the sleep patterns of 432 adults with CKD.

The participants wore a wrist monitor for five to seven days to measure sleep duration and quality, and their health was followed for a median of five years.

The participants slept an average of 6.5 hours/night, and during follow-up, 70 individuals developed kidney failure and 48 individuals died.

After adjusting for socio-demographic factors, body mass index, blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and baseline kidney function, each additional hour of nighttime sleep was linked with a 19 percent lower risk of developing kidney failure.

There was also a significant association between sleep quality and kidney failure risk: each one percent increase in sleep fragmentation was linked with a four percent increase in the risk of developing kidney failure.

Also, the patients who experienced daytime sleepiness were 10 percent more likely to die during follow-up than those who were not sleepy during the day.

"Short sleep and fragmented sleep are significant, yet unappreciated risk factors for CKD progression," said Dr Ricardo."Our research adds to the accumulating knowledge regarding the importance of sleep on kidney function, and underscores the need to design and test clinical interventions to improve sleep habits inindividuals with CKD," he added.

A recent research has found that a certain protein in the body causes inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis patients which in turn will help avoid trial and error when prescribing medications.

It comes down to proteins: specifically, a protein in the body that drives inflammation in the disease, the research found.

The discovery is an important step toward better personalizing rheumatoid arthritis treatment, helping to avoid trial and error when prescribing medications.Researchers found that patients with a higher amount or higher proportion of an inflammatory protein called type 1 interferon beta compared with another inflammatory protein, type 1 interferon alpha, do not respond as well to tumor necrosis factor inhibitors as others.

They looked at white blood cells called monocytes, a major cell type involved in rheumatoid arthritis, and found that those cells behaved differently in one group than in the other.

The discovery paves the way for a more personalized approach to treatment in rheumatoid arthritis based on the biology of a particular patient`s disease.

"Investigating these pathways may identify other targets for therapy or other markers that predict treatment response," says first author Theresa Wampler Muskardin, M.D., a rheumatologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "It will help rheumatologists find the right drug for each patient and spare patients medications that won`t work for them."The Rheumatology Research Foundation funded the study.

Mayo rheumatologist Timothy Niewold, M.D., was the study`s senior author.In other studies presented at the meeting, Mayo Clinic researchers found: Sarcoidosis, the growth of tiny clusters of inflammatory cells called granulomas, carries a higher risk of heart disease and venous thromboembolism.

Researchers also found there is seasonal variation in the incidence of sarcoidosis: Rates are consistently lower in autumn. Physicians believe that sarcoidosis may be triggered by the body`s immune response to environmental factors, such as something inhaled from the air.

The risk of coronary artery disease among patients with polymyalgia rheumatica is 70 percent higher than it is among others.Heart and circulatory abnormalities are common in Takayasu`s arteritis, a form of vasculitis in which large blood vessels become inflamed.

Mayo rheumatologists and cardiologists formed the Mayo Clinic Cardio-Rheumatology Clinic to research and pioneer better prevention, detection and treatment of heart disease and other cardiovascular problems in patients with rheumatic diseases.

The study has been presented at the American College of Rheumatology annual meeting by Mayo Clinic.

Fast-paced lives and lack of physical activity has made us sluggish and we don't really have time for much else, which is making us pile-on the kilos. Because of this, we resort to all sorts of diets or we end up skipping meals.

For years now, nutrition experts have been encouraging the world to have early dinners, because of its benefits. Heavy dinners, especially if consumed after 7:00 pm, can make you feel bloated and also become instrumental in you putting on weight.

Therefore, a new study, which supports what experts say about eating late dinners, has suggested that eating a very early dinner, or even skipping it, may help you lose weight, a new study has found.

The first human test of early time-restricted (eTRF) feeding found that meal-timing strategy reduced swings in hunger and altered fat and carbohydrate burning patterns, which may help with losing weight.

In eTRF, people eat their last meal by the mid-afternoon and do not eat again until breakfast the next morning.

"Eating only during a much smaller window of time than people are typically used to may help with weight loss," said Courtney Peterson, researcher at Pennington Biomedical Research Centre in the US.

"We found that eating between 8:00 am and 2:00 pm followed by an 18-hour daily fast kept appetite levels more even throughout the day, in comparison to eating between 8:00 am and 8:00 pm, which is what the median American does," said Peterson.

This new research suggests that eating a very early dinner, or even skipping dinner, may have some benefits for losing weight.

The body has a internal clock, and many aspects of metabolism are at their optimal functioning in the morning.

Therefore, eating in alignment with the body's circadian clock by eating earlier in the day can positively influence health, and this new study of eTRF shows that this also applies to metabolism.

They found that although eTRF did not affect how many calories participants burned, it reduced daily hunger swings and increased fat burning during several hours at night.

It also improved metabolic flexibility, which is the body's ability to switch between burning carbs and fats. Whether eTRF helps with weight loss or improves other aspects of health is still unknown.

Consuming foods rich in proteins such as lean meat, fish, legumes and almonds can significantly reduce fat accumulated in the liver within six weeks, researchers say.

The findings showed that liver fat levels dropped by up to 48 per cent after eating high-protein diet regardless of whether it came from a plant or animal source, and also prevented the occurrence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease -- a very common disorder where excess fat accumulates in the liver -- especially in people with diabetes.

"When left untreated, fatty liver is an important step progress to Type 2 diabetes and can develop into liver cirrhosis, which can have life-threatening effects," said lead author Andreas F.H. Pfeiffer, Endocrinologist at the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke (DifE), in Germany.

Further, the study showed that high-protein diet caused favourable changes in the liver and lipid metabolism, improved insulin sensitivity and led to a significant reduction in the hormone fibroblast growth factor 21 in the blood.

For the study, the researchers investigated the effects of two high-protein diets -- plant- or animal-based -- on the metabolism of 37 female and male subjects between the ages of 49 and 78 years suffering from Type 2 diabetes and, in most cases, from fatty liver.

The main source for the plant protein group were foods such as noodles or bread that were enriched with pea protein. The animal protein group consumed lean milk products as well as white meat and fish as protein sources.

The results showed that no negative effect was observed on renal function or glucose metabolism and all study participants benefited from the high-protein diet.

The liver fat content decreased significantly, in half of the study participants by more than 50 per cent.

The study was published in the journal Gastroenterology.