A Healthy Diet may keep Chronic Lung Disease at Bay

A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, fish, poultry and whole grain foods may offer protection against chronic lung disease, a new study suggests, in addition to the other benefits of such a regimen.

Researchers studied more than 42,000 male health professionals enrolled in a long-term study that began in 1986. All filled out food frequency questionnaires, and the scientists ranked them by how closely they followed what the authors call the “prudent” diet, or how much they stuck to a “Western” diet dominated by refined grains, cured and red meats, sweets and French fries.

After adjusting for age, smoking and other factors, the scientists found that the more strictly a person followed the prudent diet, the lower the risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or C.O.P.D., the umbrella term for chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Compared with the one-fifth of people with the highest intake of foods from the prudent diet, the one-fifth with the lowest intake were twice as likely to suffer from newly diagnosed C.O.P.D.

At the same time, the one-fifth of men who followed the Western diet most closely were more than four and a half times as likely to be diagnosed with chronic pulmonary disease as the one-fifth who ate the least from that menu.

Raphaëlle Varraso, the lead author, said that fruits, vegetables and omega-3 fatty acids probably explained the protective effect, and that red meat, cured meat and French fries actively increased the risk. Dr. Varraso was at the Harvard School of Public Health when the study was done, and is now a researcher at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research in France.

Treatment of Depression may lead to Longer Life

Treating depression in older adults may be a life-saving intervention, a new study suggests.

It has been known for some time that depressed people are more likely to die, but it has never been clear that treating their depression would help extend their lives.

Researchers studied 1,226 patients over 60 in the care of general practice doctors; of those, 599 met the diagnostic criteria for either major depression or clinically significant minor depression. The researchers randomly assigned about half the patients to a depression treatment program within the general practice that included psychotherapy and drugs. The study was published in the May 15 issue of The Annals of Internal Medicine.

The scientists found no difference in the survival of people with minor depression in the treated or untreated groups. But after controlling for age, sex, smoking status, education level and current physical illnesses, people with major depression who were treated were about half as likely to die during a five-year follow-up as those who were left untreated. For reasons that are unclear, the reduction in deaths seemed to come almost entirely in the group of patients who had cancer.

The authors acknowledge that they cannot rule out the possibility that the reduction in deaths was caused by some factor other than the treatment for depression, and they also recognize that errors in diagnosis could have affected their results.

Still, said Dr. Joseph J. Gallo, the lead author and an associate professor of family practice at the University of Pennsylvania, “This shows that for people who meet the criteria for major depression, it’s important to get treatment, whether it’s psychotherapy or medication, and a place to begin can be with one’s own doctor.”