Obese people, smokers cost the health system less than healthy do, study finds

Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn't save money, researchers reported Monday.

It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

"It was a small surprise," said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. "But it also makes sense: If you live longer, then you cost the health system more."

In a paper published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, Dutch researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run.

On average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived about 77 years, and obese people lived about 80 years. Ultimately, the thin and healthy group cost the most, about $417,000, from age 20 on. The cost of care for obese people was $371,000, and for smokers, about $326,000.

HERPES DRUG DOESN'T SLOW SPREAD OF AIDS

Preventing outbreaks of genital herpes with acyclovir, a generic antiviral medication, doesn't cut patients' risk of being infected with the AIDS virus, researchers said Monday in a study presented in Boston.

People with genital herpes who got the drug were just as likely to catch HIV, the cause of AIDS, as those who didn't take it, said Connie Celum, a researcher from the University of Washington in Seattle, at a medical meeting.

Public health experts estimate that more than 33 million people in the world are infected with HIV, an incurable virus for which there is no vaccine. Researchers had hoped that preventing herpes, which is linked to higher HIV risk, might help slow the spread of the AIDS virus in Africa, where infections are most common, Celum said at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.

STDS WIDESPREAD AMONG ABORIGINES

Sexually transmitted diseases have spread so widely in some Aboriginal communities that mass treatment, even for children as young as 10, is the only way to fight the problem, according to a medical paper published Monday in Sydney, Australia.

The paper's authors, Dr. Frank Bowden and Dr. Katherine Fethers, argue that the traditional method of screening and treating individuals is not working because patients often move on before their test results have been returned and because of a lack of resources.

In their paper, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, they recommend that in communities where more than 10 percent of the population has sexually transmitted diseases, "all individuals within a particular age range would be offered antibiotic treatment without recourse to an individual risk assessment and without waiting for the results of diagnostic testing." Bowden suggested that everyone older than 10 be offered the treatment, with adults giving consent for the children in their charge.

A 2005 survey of indigenous communities in the Northern Territory showed that more than one in four residents had either chlamydia or gonorrhea, both of which are sexually transmitted.

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