Reading books is tied to a longer life, a new report said. Researchers used data on 3,635 people older than 50 and divided them into three groups: those who read no books, those who read books up to 3½ hours a week, and those who read books more than 3½ hours. Compared with those who did not read, those who read for up to 3½ hours a week were 17 percent less likely to die over 12 years of follow-up, and those who read more than that were 23 percent less likely to die. Book readers lived an average of almost two years longer than those who did not read. They found a similar, but weaker, association among those who read newspapers and periodicals. "People who report as little as a half-hour a day of book reading had a significant survival advantage over those who did not read," said the senior author, Becca Levy, a professor of epidemiology at Yale.

New data for risks for sickle cell carriers

People who carry a gene for sickle cell disease might not have an elevated mortality risk, said a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Sickle cell disease occurs in 1 out of every 365 black people born in the U.S., said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 1 in 13 black Americans have sickle cell trait — carrying one gene for the disease instead of two. An earlier study found that sickle cell trait may lead to an increased risk of sudden death, but researchers at Stanford University Medical Center found no significant difference in death risk for people with sickle cell trait compared to those without it.

Measuring weight's effect on diabetes

Carrying excess weight may have a greater impact on the risk for diabetes than it does on the risk for heart disease or early death, a twins study published in JAMA Internal Medicine has found. The researchers found that having a higher body mass index, or BMI — even among those in the obese range of 30 or higher — was not associated with an increased risk for heart attack or death. But a high BMI was associated with an increased risk for diabetes.