(November 3, 2009 - Insidermedicine)

From Wisconsin - According to a report published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, smokers who want to quit may find that the best approach is to use both a nicotine patch and lozenges. Researchers studied over 1500 adult smokers, randomizing participants to five different smoking cessation regimens. After six months, those who took the patch plus lozenge were less likely to smoke than those who took the other treatments.

From Philadelphia - According to a report presented at the meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, obese HIV patients have a slower immune response to antiretroviral treatment than HIV patients of normal weight. Using data from the US Military Natural History Study, researchers examined the BMIs of over 1100 HIV patients. They found that patients with a BMI greater than 30 regained less CD4-positive T cells following treatment than those whose BMI was between 18.5 and 24.9.

And finally, from the Netherlands - Middle aged hypertension may be a predictor of Alzheimer's disease later in life, according to another report published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Dutch researchers studied nearly 200 families, half whom had parents with late-onset Alzheimer's disease and the other half with no history of the condition. They found that 40% of middle aged offspring of parents with Alzheimer's had high blood pressure, compared with only 29% of offspring with no family history of dementia.