In brief: Heart disease risk varies slightly with blood type

Potentially good news for the 45 percent of Americans who have Type O blood: Researchers said Tuesday that those people appear to have a slightly lower risk of developing heart disease than their neighbors with Type A, B or AB blood.

Dr. Lu Qi, an assistant professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, analyzed heart disease risk in two large, multidecade health studies – reviewing data collected from 62,073 women who participated in the Nurses’ Health Study, which was launched in 1976, and from 27,428 men who took part in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, launched in 1986.

Adjusting for heart disease risk factors including diet, diabetes status, gender and race, Qi and his colleagues found that study participants with type AB blood had the largest heart disease risk – 20 percent greater than that of people with Type O blood. Type B was next with an 11 percent greater risk, and type A was third with an 8 percent greater risk, the scientists reported.

93-year-old Graham released from hospital

ASHEVILLE, N.C. – Evangelist Billy Graham was released from a North Carolina hospital Tuesday after a two-day stay for treatment of bronchitis, his doctors announced.

“Mr. Graham had a quick recovery and responded very well to his treatment,” said Daniel Fertel, a pulmonologist at Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C. “Despite this illness, he remains remarkably healthy for a 93-year-old man.”

Graham, who was admitted early Sunday morning, returned to his home in tiny Montreat in the mountains of western North Carolina.

Scrabble player ejected for hiding blank tiles

Orlando, Fla. – One of the top young Scrabble players in the country has been kicked out of the game’s national championship tournament in Florida after he was caught hiding blank letter tiles, organizers said Tuesday.

John D. Williams, Jr., executive director of the National Scrabble Association, said that a male player was ejected from the 350-player event in Round 24 of the 28-round event.

The cheating was spotted by a player at a nearby table, who noticed the ejected player conceal a pair of blank tiles by dropping them on the floor, organizers said. Blank tiles can be used as wild card letters. When confronted by the tournament director, he admitted to it, organizers said.

Williams would not identify the player by name or age because he’s a minor.