MONDAY, March 3 (HealthDay News) -- The notion that stress can help bring on a stroke may have merit, British researchers say.

"If you divide the population into five different groups according to how severe their stress is, someone in the highest stress group, reporting the greatest stress, has a 40 percent increased risk of stroke than someone in the lowest group," said Paul G. Surtees, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge. "That is quite a difference."

On the other hand, his team found no association between depression and stroke risk.

Reporting in the March 4 issue of Neurology, Surtees' group followed more than 20,000 British men and women, aged 41 to 80, for an average of 8.5 years. The participants answered questions on their levels of stress and depression, using standard measures of mental health.

A total of 595 participants experienced a stroke during the study period, 167 of them fatal.

The risk of stroke rose steadily with the amount of stress reported, the researchers said, and the relationship was not changed when other stroke risk factors -- such as smoking, blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and family history -- were factored in.

The risk of stroke was not increased for participants who reported experiencing major depression at any time in their lives or who had had an episode of major depression in the past year.

According to Surtees, the study was not designed to determine how stress might increase stroke risk. "We have thought about this, and we have concluded that the mechanism is linked to the ability to adapt to psychological stress," he said. "People differ considerably in the way they deal with stressful circumstances. The increase is probably due to that, but we need to follow it up."

The relationship might have a simple explanation, said Dr. Mark Goldberg, professor of neurology at Washington University in St. Louis. "People who are under a great deal of stress may not take medications that are prescribed for them," he speculated.

Those medications would be aimed at conditions known to increase the risk of stroke -- high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, diabetes and the like, Goldberg said. But the newly reported study does not mean that stress should be ranked among those leading risk factors, he said.

The increased risk due to stress "is nothing compared to the relative risk of high blood pressure or smoking or all the other known risk factors," Goldberg said.

"I don't think this should change our understanding of how we should deal with the risk of stroke," he said. Stress is associated with a number of conditions, Goldberg noted. "It increases the risk of infection, cancer and mental health problems," he said.

"Ours was not a treatment study, so we are not free to comment on how the risk might be reduced," Surtees said. "If I were speculating, I would say that if people learn to deal with stresses in life more effectively, it might contribute to reducing their risk."

More information

Find out more about stroke risk factors at the American Heart Association  .

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Curcumin, an ingredient in the curry spice tumeric, can reduce heart enlargement and may lower the risk of heart failure, Canadian researchers say.

The scientists at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre of the Toronto General Hospital tested the effects of curcumin in mice with enlarged hearts (hypertrophy) and found it could prevent and reverse the condition, restore heart function, and reduce scar formation. The study was published in the February issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

If human clinical trials support these findings, curcumin-based treatments may provide a safe and inexpensive new option for patients with heart enlargement, according to the researchers.

They said curcumin works directly in the cell nucleus by preventing abnormal unraveling of the chromosome under stress and preventing excessive abnormal protein production.

"Curcumin's ability to shut off one of the major switches right at the chromosome source where the enlargement and scarring genes are being turned on is impressive," Dr. Peter Liu, a cardiologist at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre and scientific director at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research - Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health, said in a prepared statement.

"Whether you are young or old; male or female; the larger your heart is, the higher your risk is for developing heart attacks or heart failure in the future," Liu said. "However, until clinical trials are done, we don't recommend patients to take curcumin routinely. You are better off to take action today by lowering blood pressure, reducing cholesterol, exercising, and health eating."

Current clinical trials of curcumin-based treatments for pancreatic and colorectal cancer are yielding promising results, according to the study.

More information

The American Heart Association has more about enlarged heart  .

TUESDAY, Feb. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Treatment with adult stem cells harvested from blood or bone marrow may benefit some patients with certain kinds of cardiovascular disorders and autoimmune diseases, a new U.S. analysis shows.

There are two types of stem cells, according to background information in the study. Embryonic stem cells are harvested from embryos four to five days after fertilization. Adult stem cells are located in tissues throughout the body and provide a reservoir for replacement of damaged or aging cells.

While stem cell therapy shows great promise, "clinical application has lagged due to ethical concerns [over embryonic stem cells] or difficulties harvesting or safely and efficiently expanding sufficient quantities," the review authors noted. "In contrast, clinical indications for blood-derived [from peripheral or umbilical cord blood] and bone marrow-derived stem cells, which can be easily and safely harvested, are rapidly increasing."

Dr. Richard K. Burt, of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and colleagues examined hundreds of studies of blood- or bone-marrow derived stem cells that were conducted between January 1997 and December 2007 -- 323 assessed feasibility and toxicity, and 69 looked at patient outcomes.

The review found that in 26 studies involving a total of 854 patients with autoimmune diseases there was a treatment-related death rate of: less than 1 percent (two of 220 patients) for nonmyeloablative (not causing bone marrow suppression); less than 2 percent (three of 197 patients) for dose-reduced myeloablative; and 13 percent (13 of 100 patients) for intense myeloablative regimens -- those including total body irradiation or high-dose busulfan, a drug used to treat some forms of chronic leukemia.

"While all trials performed during the inflammatory stage of autoimmune disease suggested that the transplantation of hematopoietic [formation of blood or blood cells] stem cells [HSCs] may have a potent disease-remitting effect, remission duration remains unclear, and no randomized trials have been published," the review authors wrote.

In 17 studies of 1,002 heart attack patients, 16 studies of 493 patients with chronic coronary artery disease, and three meta-analyses, there was evidence suggesting that adult stem cell transplantation may help lead to modest improvements in cardiac function among people with coronary artery disease.

More clinical trials are needed to determine the most appropriate stem cell type, dose, method, timing of delivery -- as well as adverse effects -- to treat cardiovascular and immune diseases and other disorders, the review authors concluded.

The study is published in the Feb. 27 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

More information

The U.S. National Institutes of Health has more about stem cells.

MONDAY, Feb. 25 (HealthDay News) -- While the number of elderly Americans newly diagnosed with heart failure has declined, the number of those living with the condition has increased, new research finds.

The Duke University study analyzed data on 622,789 Medicare patients, aged 65 and older, diagnosed with heart failure between 1994 and 2003. It found that the annual occurrence of heart failure decreased from 32 per 1,000 person-years (years of observation time during which each person is at risk to develop the disease) in 1994, to 29 per 1,000 person-years in 2003.

When the researchers looked at specific age groups, they found a sharper decline among people aged 80 to 84 (from 57.5 to 48.4 per 1,000 person-years), and a slight increase among those aged 65 to 69 (from 17.5 to 19.3 per 1,000 person years).

Between 1994 and 2003, the number of people living with heart failure increased, from about 140,000 to 200,000. More men than women live with the condition.

"The proportion of [Medicare] beneficiaries with a heart failure diagnosis increased from 90 per 1,000 in 1994 to 120 per 1,000 in 2000, and remained at about 120 per 1,000 through 2003," the authors wrote.

The findings are published in the Feb. 25 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Although the incidence of heart failure has declined somewhat during the past decade, modest survival gains have resulted in an increase in the number of patients living with heart failure," the researchers concluded. "Identifying optimal strategies for the treatment and management of heart failure will become increasingly important as the size of the Medicare population grows."

Almost 5 million people in the United States have heart failure, which kills more than 300,000 patients a year. Since it's primarily a disease of older people, it places a significant and increasing burden on Medicare, said the study authors, who noted that the number of people age 65 and older hospitalized for heart failure increased by more than 30 percent from 1984 to 2002.

More information

The American Heart Association has more about heart failure  .