News - 86

Women’s Health Action Plan

On International Women’s Day and as part of Women’s Health Week 2022, the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has launched the Women’s Health Action Plan 2022-2023, the first Women’s Health Action Plan published in Ireland.

Orla O’Connor, Director of the National Women’s Council

The Action Plan was developed by the Department of Health in partnership with the HSE, the National Women and Infants Health Programme, the European Institute for Women’s Health, the Irish College of General Practitioners, and the National Women’s Council of Ireland through the work of the Women’s Health Taskforce.

The Action Plan sets out women’s priorities for women’s health. It is underpinned by the voices and perspectives of women, their advocates and women’s health professionals who have provided their insights and experiences through a range of listening projects and engagements undertaken by the Women’s Health Taskforce 2020-2021.

Women’s health is a top priority for this government and is strongly supported in Budget 2022 with ¤31 million additional funding for new developments in women’s health. This funding will enable:

• ¤8.66 million additional funding for continued implementation of the National Maternity Strategy

• ¤9 million to fund access to contraception for women aged 17-25

• ¤5.3 million to grow access to “see and treat” gynaecology clinics (20 nationally); specialist menopause clinics (4 nationally); and specialist endometriosis services (2 nationally)

• ¤5 million to bring the Women’s Health Fund to an investment of ¤10 million to support innovative new approaches to women’s health nationwide (illustrated in this Plan)

Orla O’Connor, Director of the National Women’s Council and member of the Women’s Health Taskforce welcomed the launch of the Action Plan, “The Women’s Health Taskforce made the conscious decision to put women’s voices at the heart of health policy and implementation, and this Plan seeks to deliver on what many women shared through the ‘Radical Listening’ exercise - an ask for a person-centred and accessible health system, which works to meet women’s needs as they arise. This Plan provides strong steps towards building that future for women in Ireland and our task is now to drive forward these actions that will be the critical levers for delivering meaningful change.”

Link between High Cholesterol and Heart Disease ‘Inconsistent’

New research from RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences has revealed that the link between ‘bad’ cholesterol (LDL-C) and poor health outcomes, such as heart attack and stroke, may not be as strong as previously thought.

Published in JAMA Internal Medicine, the research questions the efficacy of statins when prescribed with the aim of lowering LDL-C and therefore reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Previous research has suggested that using statins to lower LDL-C positively affects health outcomes, and this is reflected in the various iterations of expert guidelines for the prevention of CVD. Statins are now commonly prescribed by doctors, with one third of Irish adults over the age of 50 taking statins, according to previous research.

The new findings contradict this theory, finding that this relationship was not as strong as previously thought. Instead, the research demonstrates that lowering LDL-C using statins had an inconsistent and inconclusive impact on CVD outcomes such as myocardial infarction (MI), stoke, and all-cause mortality.

In addition, it indicates that the overall benefit of taking statins may be small and will vary depending on an individual’s personal risk factors.

The lead author on the paper is Dr Paula Byrne from the HRB Centre for Primary Care Research based in RCSI’s Department of General Practice. Commenting on the findings, Dr Byrne said: “The message has long been that lowering your cholesterol will reduce your risk of heart disease, and that statins help to achieve this. However, our research indicates that, in reality, the benefits of taking statins are varied and can be quite modest.”

The researchers go on to suggest that this updated information should be communicated to patients through informed clinical decision-making and updated clinical guidelines and policy.

This important discovery was a collaboration with Professor Susan M Smith, also of RCSI and with researchers from the University of New Mexico, USA, (Dr Robert DuBroff), the Institute for Scientific Freedom in Denmark (Dr Maryanne Demasi), Bond University in Australia (Dr Mark Jones) and independent researcher Dr Kirsty O’Brien.

Managing Obesity

Irish and German scientists have just identified how specific immune cells can work together in fat to cause inflammation that leads to weight gain and obesity. Their work pinpoints new avenues to exploit the regulation of that inflammation in fat tissue, thereby suggesting new ways to manage obesity.

There is a global epidemic in obesity in adults and children, with obese people predisposed to develop diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. New therapies are needed to help tackle this issue.

In their research, the scientists identified how “checkpoint proteins” and immune cells alter inflammatory cells within the fat tissue to cause obesity. In people with obesity (Body Mass Index BMI> 30 kg/m 2 ) these changes in checkpoint expression in the visceral fat was predictive of the person’s weight.

The scientists then showed that modifications in the so-called immune checkpoint proteins of mice on a Western “high fat” diet were linked to dramatic reductions in the development of obesity and diabetes.

The study, just published in the leading international biomedical journal Science Translational Medicine, was led by Professor Padraic Fallon from Trinity College Dublin’s School of Medicine, and Dr Christian Schwartz, a former EMBO Fellow in Trinity and now a Principal Investigator at the University Hospital Erlangen.

Professor Fallon, who is based in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, commented, “This new process of checkpoint regulation of cells in visceral fat of obese individuals advances our understanding of how the immune system controls diet-induced weight gain that can lead to conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.

“Our discovery has broader impacts on addressing how obesity influences co-morbidity with other diseases, as shown in the COVID-19 pandemic, where obese individuals that are infected with SARS-CoV-2 are more likely to develop severe disease that requires intensive care and also have an increased risk of mortality.”