Author Interviews, Gender Differences, Heart Disease, Karolinski Institute, Opiods, PNAS / 18.03.2020
Main Cause of US Lifespan Stagnation Not Opioids
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
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Dr. Myrskylä[/caption]
Mikko Myrskylä PhD
Executive Director, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Professorial Research Fellow,
London School of Economics Professor of Social Statistics
University of Helsinki
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Life expectancy in the U.S. increased at a phenomenal pace throughout the twentieth century, by nearly two years per decade. After 2010, however, U.S. life expectancy growth stalled and has most recently been declining. A critical question for American health policy is how to return U.S. life expectancy to its pre-2010 growth rate. Researchers and policy makers have focused on rising drug-related deaths in their search for the explanations for the stalling and declining life expectancy.
Dr. Myrskylä[/caption]
Mikko Myrskylä PhD
Executive Director, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Professorial Research Fellow,
London School of Economics Professor of Social Statistics
University of Helsinki
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Life expectancy in the U.S. increased at a phenomenal pace throughout the twentieth century, by nearly two years per decade. After 2010, however, U.S. life expectancy growth stalled and has most recently been declining. A critical question for American health policy is how to return U.S. life expectancy to its pre-2010 growth rate. Researchers and policy makers have focused on rising drug-related deaths in their search for the explanations for the stalling and declining life expectancy.
Deborah M Eaton
Doctorate Student / Research Assistant
Temple University
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Heart failure (HF) with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) accounts for approximately 50% of cases of HF and to date clinical trials with HFpEF patients have failed to produce positive outcomes. Part of this is likely due to the lack of HFpEF animal models for preclinical testing. Our lab addressed this gap in knowledge by developing an animal model that mimics critical features of the human HFpEF phenotype. We performed an in-depth cardiopulmonary characterization highlighting that the model has characteristics of human disease. We then tested the effects of a pan-HDAC inhibitor, vorinostat/SAHA, in collaboration with Dr. Timothy McKinsey, who is an expert in HDAC inhibitors and recently published work1 that laid the foundation for this study. 
Dr. Kistler[/caption]
Professor Peter M Kistler MBBS, PhD, FRACP
Head of Clinical Electrophysiology Research
Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute
Head of Electrophysiology at The Alfred hospital
Professor of Medicine
University of Melbourne.
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: There is a well known association between alcohol intake and atrial fibrillation form population based studies which demonstrate that for every 1 standard drink the incidence of AFib increases by 8%.
This is the first randomised study to determine of alcohol reduction/abstinence leads to a reduction in AFib episodes and time to recurrence.
