Nutella maker says will brave French tax hike
















PARIS (Reuters) – The makers of the renowned Nutella food spread say they will not change the lucrative recipe even if France, its biggest market, endorses proposals to quadruple tax on a key ingredient of the gooey mix, palm oil.


Senators in France, where a left-wing government is hiking tax generally to help slash a bloated debt, have proposed a 300 percent tax hike on palm oil on the grounds that its production harms the environment and its consumption fuels obesity.













Frederic Thil, French director for Ferrero, the Italian firm that makes the sugary, chocolate-colored paste, sounded a defiant note in Le Parisien daily.


“The arguments are unfair and the repercussions would be catastrophic,” he told the newspaper.


More than 100 million jars of Nutella were sold in France alone in 2008, according to Ferrero, whose website says the recipe sold in large quantities across the Western world was invented in the backroom of an Italian pastry shop in 1944.


The main ingredients are sugar, milk powder, hazelnuts, cocoa, emulsifier, flavoring and palm oil, on which a tax of almost 100 euros per metric tonne is levied in France at the moment.


That tax would rise to 400 euros a tonne if the proposal floated by a Senate committee earlier this month secures majority backing in the Senate and in the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly.


France, which is keen to find other funding sources for a generous healthcare system in cash-strapped times, has already raised tax on sugary drinks and recently hatched plans to hike tax on beer to help plug the hole in public welfare finances.


Thil said the maker of Nutella, popular in many countries as a breakfast fare smeared onto slices of bread, would do all it could to limit the hit from any tax rise for consumers.


Palm oil, also extensively used in margarine, biscuits and crisps, makes up about 20 percent of the Nutella mix. The 300 percent tax rise, if passed on, would raise the cost of a 1-kilo jar or the spread by 0.06 euros, according to ASEF, an association of doctors that backs the tax hike proposal.


The other argument made for a tax increase is that it will encourage a shift away from intensive production methods that have prompted destruction of forests in countries such as Malaysia, a major exporter of palm oil.


(Reporting By Brian Love; Editing by Toby Chopra)


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Greece in bid for bridge finance

















Greece is to make an urgent bid to raise funds from the financial markets in case it does not get another tranche of bailout aid in time to repay debts.













On Tuesday, it plans to issue bonds, repayable in one and three months, to cover debt repayments due on Friday.


The bond issue is to raise 3.12bn euros ($ 4bn; £2.4bn), to help the country repay creditors owed about 4bn euros.


Greece is negotiating to secure aid worth 31.5bn euros from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.


Without the aid, heavily-indebted Greece would face bankruptcy.


Manos Chatzidakis, an analyst at Beta Securities in Athens, said the four-week treasury auction was an unusual but necessary step.


It would keep Athens afloat until leaders of the eurozone meet on 26 November to approve payment of the latest rescue loans. Despite the Athens Parliament passing the hugely unpopular austerity cutbacks, the EU, IMF and European Central Bank are still reviewing the country’s finances.


“This is bridge financing ahead of the November 26 decision, to ensure that there is no problem with [repaying] bondholders. It is unorthodox, but it’s a form of bridge financing and not the beginning of regular such issues. It has a purely technical role,” Mr Chatzidakis said.


The news came as Cyprus began a new round of talks about a bailout to support the country’s ailing banks and service its debt payments.


Negotiators from the EU, ECB and the IMF – collectively known as troika – held talks with senior government officials from Cyprus’s finance ministry and central bank. The talks are expected to continue into next week.


Cyprus has been unable to tap international financial markets for money since last year because of its junk credit rating. The country has been negotiating with Russia for money, but the talks are thought to have stalled.


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Syria opposition bloc elects Christian as leader
















DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Syria‘s main opposition group in exile has elected a Christian Paris-based former geography teacher as its new president.


George Sabra said Friday that his election as head of the Syrian National Council is a sign that the opposition is not plagued by sectarian divisions.













Sabra says the SNC‘s main demand is to receive weapons from the international community. The U.S. and some other foreign backers of rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad have so far refused to send weapons for fear they can fall into the wrong hands.


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Andy Summers film documents surviving the Police
















LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Police guitarist Andy Summers has always been a multifaceted artist – musician, songwriter, photographer and author. Now he can add filmmaker to his extensive resume.


“Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police,” Summers’ 90-minute documentary film that chronicles his musical career and life with supergroup, has its world premiere at the DOC NYC festival in New York on Friday.













Summers, who narrates the film, describes it as “a musical journey” that uses live footage from the 2007-2008 Police reunion world tour, along with lots of archival material from both the early Police days and the London punk scene.


“But it’s not done as a chronological story,” he told Reuters. “We establish the fact we’re doing the reunion tour early on, and then it dips in and out of live Police concert footage, and then starts going back to the earlier days.”


Based on his 2006 memoir “One Train Later,” the documentary also incorporates rare footage dating back to the 1960s, when Summers, now 69, was involved with the early British rock scene and seminal artists including British vocalist and keyboard player Zoot Money and Eric Burdon. The film also features many still photographs that the rock star took along the way.


“I was always interested in photography, so it was very natural for me to document everything, whether it was backstage at some grungy club or on early tours with the Police,” he said.


“So there’s a lot of intimate moments and interesting shots and archival stuff, especially in the first 25 minutes of the film, with the Sex Pistols appearing and so on.”


BUMPING INTO FAME


Following his book’s lead, the film also documents the serendipitous nature of the formation of the Police, one of the biggest bands in rock history, when Summers “just happened to bump into” drummer Stewart Copeland in a London Underground station one day in 1977.


The two decided to have coffee and discuss forming a new band with a then-unknown singer called Sting, whom they had just met.


“One train later, and it all might never have happened,” recalled Summers, “which is why I titled the book ‘One Train Later.’”


He would have preferred that title for the documentary. “It’s much hipper and doesn’t pander to the obvious Police connection,” he said, “so I’m hoping at some point we’ll change it to that.”


Inevitably, the film also focuses on the breakup of the always-combustible and often acrimonious trio.


“It’s obviously a very painful and poignant moment, when we all realize, ‘Well, that’s it,’” Summers said of the 2008 footage documenting the band’s final dissolution.


“The camera lingers on all our faces, and you can see the raw emotion there. It’s very bittersweet.”


As for rumors that the Police may re-form yet again for another tour, Summers does not think that is likely, even though their 30th reunion tour grossed more than $ 350 million.


“But then I never thought we’d get back together to do the last tour, so I never shut the door on anything,” he said. “I personally think that my book was somewhat of a provoking agent in getting the Police reunited, so maybe this film will do the same thing again.”


(Reporting by Iain Blair, Editing by Jill Serjeant, Patricia Reaney and Lisa Von Ahn)


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Uncle Sam to Start Tracking Tobacco Use in Movies Aimed at Kids
















Federal health authorities said Friday they will begin monitoring how well movie studios are doing to reduce depictions of smoking and other tobacco use in youth-rated movies.


Authorities at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health said that voluntary efforts by movie studios to reduce tobacco use in youth-rated movies have been unimpressive. Data on tobacco use in movies will  be added to regular CDC reports to the public on smoking prevalence among youth and adults, total and per-capita cigarette consumption, and progress on tobacco control policies.













“We all have a responsibility to prevent youth from becoming tobacco users, and the movie industry has a responsibility to protect our youth from exposure to tobacco use and other pro-tobacco imagery in movies that are produced and rated as appropriate for children and adolescents,” said the lead author of the paper, Dr. Tim McAfee. “Eliminating tobacco imagery in movies is an important step that should be easy to take.”


MORE: PG-13 Movies May Start Teens Smoking


Understanding what motivates kids to smoke is a high priority of public-health experts. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, more than 3,800 kids a day smoke their first cigarette. And, while smoking rates fell over the past 40 years, rates in both adults and youths have held steady in more recent years.


Previous research shows that kids who see smoking on television and in the movies are more likely to take up smoking. But depictions of smoking continue to turn up in youth-rated movies. Last year, the number of on-screen smoking scenes increased, according to a study published in the October issue of the journal Preventing Chronic Disease.


The data, from Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down!, a project of  Breathe California-Emigrant Trails, is based on tobacco incidents in top-grossing movies each year rated G, PG and PG-13. The study looked at 134 movies that were among the 10 top-grossing, youth-rated movies last year for at least one week.


The study found the number of tobacco incidents rose 3 percent (1,881 incidents) in 2011 compared to 2010 despite the fact that there were five fewer movies in the 2011 sample. The number of tobacco incidents per movie rose 7 percent over 2010 — 13.1 incidents per movie in 2010 and 14 last year. The biggest increase in smoking depictions occurred in G and PG movies.


MORE: Smoking Rates Around the World Are Astronomical


And, while kids aren’t supposed to see R-rated movies, smoking incidents in those films rose 7 percent in 2011, said the author of the study, Dr. Stanton A. Glantz, a professor of medicine for the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco. Glantz has been studying smoking in the movies for many years.


“There are going to be hundreds or thousands of kids who will take up smoking due to this backsliding,” Glantz told Take Part. “There is a dose response here, too — the more kids see, the more likely they will smoke.”


The uptick in smoking comes at a time when health professionals are unified behind the idea that kids are influenced by such depictions in the media. In a report released earlier this year, U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin identified smoking in movies and tobacco-company advertising as the primary forces that cause kids to take up smoking.


“The evidence is sufficient to conclude that there is a causal relationship between depictions of smoking in the movies and the initiation of smoking among young people,” the Surgeon General’s report noted. Images of smoking in the movies, “are powerful because they can make smoking seem like a normal, acceptable, or even attractive activity. Young people may also look up to movie stars, both on and off screen, and may want to imitate behaviors they see.”


MORE: Teen Smoking an ‘Epidemic,’ Surgeon General Says


Previous studies have also showed that depictions of smoking in the movies are more likely to influence low-risk kids to smoke; “the kids whose parents don’t smoke or kids who do well in school,” Glantz says.


The increase in on-screen smoking is further disappointing because top officials for three studios — Comcast (Universal), Disney and Time Warner — had previously committed to reductions in smoking in their movies, Glantz says. Smoking in youth-rated movies declined from 2005 to 2010.


Among these companies with stated policies discouraging smoking in movies, the percentage of movies that were tobacco-free declined by 17 percent from 2010 to 2011.


“A few studios had taken the lead in reducing the amount of smoking in their films,” Glantz says.  “They accomplished it and showed it could be done. But now there is this serious back-sliding. I don’t know what accounts for that.  These three studios are now about as bad as the studios that hadn’t made a lot of progress. I don’t know what happened.”


The Walt Disney Company “actively seeks to limit the depiction of smoking in


movies marketed to youth,” according to a statement released by the company to Take Part.


MORE: U.S. Appeals Court Strikes Down Graphic Cigarette Warning Labels


“Disney discourages depictions of cigarette smoking in movies produced in the United States for which a Disney entity is the sole or lead producer and which are released either as a Touchstone movie or Marvel movie, and seeks to limit cigarette smoking in those movies that are not rated “R” to: scenes in which smoking is part of the historical, biographical or cultural context of the scene or is important to the character or scene from a factual or creative standpoint, or to scenes in which cigarette smoking is portrayed in an unfavorable light or the negative consequences of smoking are emphasized,” according to the statement.


The company also said it prohibits tobacco product placement and promotions and will  place anti-smoking public service announcements on DVD’s of new and newly re-mastered titles, not rated “R,” that depict cigarette smoking and will work with theater owners to encourage the exhibition of an anti-smoking public service announcement before the theatrical exhibition of any such movie.


But the World Health Organization and other public health groups have recommended formal policies aimed at eliminating smoking in the movies, McAfee noted.


MORE: Teens: Smoking Less, Calling It ‘Scummy’ More


The Glantz study raises “serious concerns about this individual company approach,” he wrote. “This difference suggests that individual company policies may not be sufficient to sustain a reduction in youth exposure to tobacco-use and other pro-tobacco imagery in movies and that more formal, industry-wide policies are needed.”


Glantz has long argued for a modernized rating system to give movies with any tobacco use an R rating, unless the presentation of tobacco “clearly and unambiguously reflects the dangers and consequences of tobacco use,” he says. Other options to discourage smoking are to run anti-smoking messages prior to the movie and persuading movie studies to adopt policies to certify they receive no payments for depicting particular tobacco brands in their movies.


“The MPAA has refused to address this issue in a meaningful way by giving movies with smoking an R rating,” Glantz says. “They have never rated a single movie R for smoking. The goal here is to get smoking out of the movies being shown to kids.”


Question: Should movies that depict smoking receive an R rating? Tell us what you think in the comments.



Shari Roan is an award-winning health writer based in Southern California. She is the author of three books on health and science subjects.


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Canada Pension Plan looks for big, global deals
















TORONTO (Reuters) – The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, one of the world’s biggest pension funds and global dealmakers, said it was looking for big, complex acquisitions to boost its portfolio and outmaneuver rivals as the world’s economy improves.


CPPIB, whose assets rose to a record C$ 170.1 billion in the third quarter from C$ 165.8 billion three months earlier, said its long-term investment horizon and increasingly skilled team of dealmakers will give it an advantage as improving U.S. and Chinese economies bring competitors back to the playing field.













“I think you’ll expect to see us favoring larger and more complex deals that are global in nature,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Wiseman said in an interview after the fund’s second-quarter results were released.


“What we try to do is exploit the areas where we have comparative advantages, and that tends to be in larger transactions, in transactions where the value creation will play out over a long period of time, and in transactions that are occasionally complex in nature,” he said.


“We’ve now built a team with high capabilities that can transact globally and in complex large-scale opportunities.”


He said the fund, which invests on behalf of 18 million Canadian contributors and beneficiaries, was still trying to diversify geographically out of Canada. He said it is focusing on emerging markets where the pace of growth was higher than the rest of the world.


Wiseman was optimistic about improving prospects for recovery in the United States, despite the fiscal cliff concern, and in China, where data on Friday showed infrastructure investment accelerated and output from the country’s factories ran at its fastest in five months.


“I do think you are seeing signs of longer-term prospects for growth, both in the U.S. — and that will obviously have an impact on Canada as well — but also some of the numbers that came out of China this morning are cautiously encouraging,” Wiseman said.


Toronto-based CPPIB reported a 1.9 percent return on investments for the fiscal second quarter ended Sept 30, as financial markets gained globally. The C$ 4.3 billion increase in net assets after operating expenses resulted from C$ 3.1 billion in investment income and $ 1.3 billion in net Canada Pension Plan contributions.


The massive size and long investment horizon of CPPIB has enabled it to do deals around the world, especially as cash-strapped governments and companies seek partners with deep pockets.


CPPIB shifted to an active investment strategy six years ago, seeking to boost returns on its portfolio by buying real estate, infrastructure and other assets while providing private equity and credit to partners looking for cash.


Wiseman said prices are recovering in some of the fund’s favorite investment areas, including real estate, as investors seek stable returns and the low volatility the asset promises.


“I’m talking about really Class A office buildings and that sort of thing. We’re seeing pricing in those assets increasing, with the arrival of a larger number of investors into the asset class. That doesn’t mean we can’t find value there, but we’re feeling very cautious,” he said.


In recent months, CPPIB has announced acquisitions across a broad swath of asset classes, including deals in motor sports, Australian shopping malls, British heating and air conditioning and Chinese logistics, adding to its massive portfolio of investments in real estate, infrastructure, private equity and global stocks and bonds.


The fund’s five-year annualized investment rate of return edged up to 2.5 percent at the end of the quarter, while the 10-year rate of return rose to 6.7 percent.


CPPIB still has about nine years before benefits paid exceed contributions and it will need investments to help pay pensions.


(Reporting by Andrea Hopkins; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Nick Zieminski, Lisa Von Ahn and David Gregorio)


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Myanmar says Obama to visit later this month
















YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — President Barack Obama will make a groundbreaking visit later this month to Myanmar, an official said Thursday, following through with his policy of rapprochement to encourage democracy in the Southeast Asian nation.


The Myanmar official speaking from the capital, Naypyitaw, said Thursday that security for a visit on Nov. 18 or 19 had been prepared, but the schedule was not final. He asked not to be named because he was not authorized to give information to the media.













The official said Obama would meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as well as government officials including reformist President Thein Sein.


It would be the first-ever visit to Myanmar by an American president. U.S. officials have not yet announced any plans for a visit, which would come less than two weeks after Obama’s election to a second term.


Obama’s administration has sought to encourage the recent democratic progress under Thein Sein by easing sanctions applied against Myanmar’s previous military regime.


Officials in nearby Thailand and Cambodia have already informally announced plans for visits by Obama that same week. Cambodia is hosting a summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and Thailand is a longtime close U.S. ally.


The visit to Myanmar, also known as Burma, would be the culmination of a dramatic turnaround in relations with Washington as the country has shifted from five decades of ruinous military rule and shaken off the pariah status it had earned through its bloody suppression of democracy.


Obama’s ending of the long-standing U.S. isolation of Myanmar’s generals has played a part in coaxing them into political reforms that have unfolded with surprising speed in the past year. The U.S. has appointed a full ambassador and suspended sanctions to reward Myanmar for political prisoner releases and the election of Nobel laureate Suu Kyi to parliament.


From Myanmar’s point of view, the lifting of sanctions is essential for boosting a lagging economy that was hurt not only by sanctions that curbed exports and foreign investment, but also by what had been a protectionist, centralized approach. Thein Sein’s government has initiated major economic reforms in addition to political ones.


A procession of senior diplomats and world leaders have traveled to Myanmar, stopping both in the remote, opulent capital city, which was built by the former ruling junta, and at Suu Kyi’s dilapidated lakeside villa in the main city of Yangon, where she spent 15 years under house arrest. New Zealand announced Thursday that Prime Minister John Key would visit Myanmar after attending the regional meetings in Cambodia.


The most senior U.S. official to visit was Hillary Rodham Clinton, who last December became the first U.S. secretary of state to travel to Myanmar in 56 years.


The Obama administration regards the political changes in Myanmar as a marquee achievement in its foreign policy, and one that could dilute the influence of China in a country that has a strategic location between South and Southeast Asia, regions of growing economic importance.


But exiled Myanmar activists and human rights groups are likely to criticize an Obama visit as premature, rewarding Thein Sein before his political and economic reforms have truly taken root. The military — still dominant and implicated in rights abuses — has failed to prevent vicious outbreaks of communal violence in the west of the country that have left scores dead.


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‘World of Warcraft’ State Senate Candidate Wins Election
















Add another demographic to the list of winners on Tuesday night; in addition to Democrats, women, and marijuana advocates, gamers scored a political victory in Maine‘s state senate.


Colleen Lachowitz, the Democratic state senate candidate in Maine whose race drew national attention when the state’s Republican party attacked her for her world of warcraft persona, won election on Tuesday, ousting Republican incumbent Tom H. Martin Jr. by a little over 900 votes, according to the Morning Sentinel.













Lachowitz drew criticism from the Maine state GOP for comments the candidate made online while playing World of Warcraft (Lachowicz is a level 85 orc in the popular multi-player online role-playing game.) Only, it wasn’t Lachowicz herself who made the comments-it was Lachowicz’s warcraft alter-ego, Santiaga.


Santiaga said some not-so-nice things about Republicans, including conservative tax icon and promoter of the “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” Grover Norquist. Santiaga commented that she “may have to go and hunt down Grover Norquist and drown him in my bath tub.”


Republicans launched a series of attacks against Lachowicz, maintaining that their criticism was not based on Lachowicz’s gaming habit, but rather the comments made by her alter-ego while gaming.


“This is not about her playing video games, this is about the comments she made while gaming,” David Sorenson, communications director for the Maine Republican Party, told ABC News, referring to the comments about Norquist, as well as things said about other Republicans. “These are all things that are unbecoming to a state Senator.”


The attacks didn’t sway voters though. Lachowicz, who works as a social worker in Kennebec, Maine, is now a state senator-elect in the Pine Tree state.


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Look who’s talking! Kirstie Alley calls Travolta “greatest love”
















LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actress Kirstie Alley described on Wednesday how she fell in love more than 20 years ago with John Travolta, and rejected widespread Hollywood speculation that the “Grease” star is secretly gay.


Alley, former star of the 1980s TV comedy “Cheers,” told ABC television journalist Barbara Walters that she fell for both Travolta and actor Patrick Swayze in the 1980s, although their romances never got physical.













Alley, 61, said she was attracted to Travolta while the pair were making the 1989 movie “Look Who’s Talking,” calling him “the greatest love of my life.”


“Believe me, it took everything I had inside, outside, whatever, to not run off and marry John and be with John for the rest of my life,” Alley told Walters in an interview broadcast on breakfast TV show “Good Morning America.”


Asked by Walters to comment on persistent rumors about Travolta’s sexuality, she said: “I know John with all my heart and soul. He’s not gay.”


Alley added: “I think in some weird way, in Hollywood, if someone gets big enough and famous enough, and they’re not out doing drugs and they’re not womanizing, what do you say about them?”


Travolta was single at the time, but Alley was on her second marriage, so she never pursued her feelings, she explained.


Travolta later married actress Kelly Preston, his wife for the past 20 years. But the actor was the target of two lawsuits earlier this year, which were quickly dropped, from two male masseurs who claimed Travolta made unwanted sexual advances.


Alley, who talks more about her love life in her new book, “The Art of Men,” said she fell for Swayze while they were filming the 1985 Civil War TV miniseries “North and South.”


“We did fall in love. I was more willing to break up my marriage and I wasn’t willing to break up his marriage,” Alley said, explaining why the relationship failed to go further.


Swayze, best known for his lead role in “Dirty Dancing,” died of pancreatic cancer in 2009 at the age of 57. He was married to dancer Lisa Niemi from 1975 until his death.


Alley has been married twice. Her second marriage, to actor Parker Stevenson, ended in 1997.


(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; editing by Matthew Lewis)


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Home blood pressure monitors show mixed results
















NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Home blood pressure monitors may be useful to some older adults who’ve suffered a stroke, but little help to others, a new study suggests.


Researchers found that overall, home monitors did not help stroke sufferers get a better handle on their blood pressure over one year.













The exception, though, was patients whose blood pressure was poorly controlled at the study’s start – meaning it was above the standard high blood pressure cutoff of 140/90 mm Hg.


In that case, patients given a home monitor cut an average of 11 points from their systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood-pressure reading). That compared with just under five points among patients who were not given the devices.


That’s a meaningful difference, said Hayden B. Bosworth, a professor of medicine at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who was not involved in the study.


The lack of overall benefit in the study doesn’t mean stroke patients shouldn’t use blood pressure monitors, according to Bosworth, who studies ways to improve people’s management of high blood pressure and other chronic conditions.


“It may be a matter of finding the right people to give them to,” he said.


Sally M. Kerry, the lead researcher on the study, said that many people who’ve had a stroke are “very motivated” to prevent another. So they may already be doing their best to keep their numbers under control.


“The main issue seems to be with those who already have relatively well-controlled blood pressure. Home monitoring is unlikely to improve this, although people do find it reassuring,” Kerry, a researcher at Queen Mary, University of London in the UK, said in an email.


She and her colleagues report their findings in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.


Past studies have found that home monitoring may aid blood pressure control. A 2010 review of 37 clinical trials found that overall, people who used monitors shaved a few extra points from their blood pressure. They were also more likely to cut down on medication compared with patients who stuck with traditional doctor’s office measurements.


The new study focused on patients who’d recently had a stroke – a group, Bosworth noted, that hasn’t really been studied when it comes to home blood pressure monitoring. He said that’s probably in part because there is no real consensus on what stroke survivors’ blood pressure levels should be.


Kerry’s team randomly assigned the patients to either stick with standard care only or get a home monitor – along with instructions on how to use it and periodic phone calls from a nurse to check on how they were doing.


Over the next year, the results were mixed. Among the patients who didn’t seem to benefit were those who’d been left disabled by their stroke. Home monitors showed no effects on their blood pressure, while non-disabled patients cut about four points using a monitor.


“Some patients had difficulty in carrying out monitoring because they did not have a carer who lived with them to help,” Kerry said.


Bosworth pointed out that many people with high blood pressure already have home monitors, and these findings do not mean that stroke survivors can’t benefit.


It may just be that an elderly person left disabled by a stroke is “not the best” candidate, he said.


And for a monitor to benefit anyone, the numbers have to be put to good use, Bosworth said. That means a person’s healthcare provider has to know what the numbers are and make any needed adjustments in the patient’s medication.


Traditionally, people have had to bring their home readings to their doctor at each visit; some monitors automatically record each reading and allow you to print them out. But there is also “telemonitoring,” wherein wired or wireless technology is used to automatically send blood pressure readings to the doctor’s office.


That’s not widely used in the real world yet, but studies have suggested that telemonitoring boosts the effectiveness of home blood pressure measurements.


Home monitors range in cost from about $ 25 to more than $ 100, depending on the features. Experts generally suggest that you choose a monitor that has been validated for accuracy according to international criteria.


Some groups, like the British Hypertension Society and the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, test blood pressure monitors’ reliability and keep lists of validated monitors on their websites.


The current study was funded by The Stroke Association, a UK charity.


If you do use a monitor, Kerry cautioned against interpreting the readings on your own and changing your medication dose.


In this study, she noted, some patients using home monitors did take it upon themselves to cut down on medication when they saw that their numbers looked good. And that, Kerry added, might be one reason why patients with fairly good control at the outset did not see a further improvement when they used a monitor.


SOURCE: http://bit.ly/STMwU2 CMAJ, online November 5, 2012.


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