In brief: Statins carry diabetes risk for some women, study says

LOS ANGELES – Older women who take statin medications to ward off heart attacks are more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than those who do not take the widely used cholesterol-lowering drugs, a study has found.

The report, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, showed that in a large group of post-menopausal women, those who took a statin of any type were, on average, 48 percent more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than those who didn’t.

The heightened risk for diabetes was most pronounced in statin-taking women of Asian origin, or those with a body mass index in the healthy, normal range.

The authors did not recommend changes in current medical guidelines for statin use, and urged women taking statins not to stop. But they said that future research on statins should examine gender and ethnic differences in responses to the medications.

Police say grandmother killed adopted girl and self

CONWAY, Ark. – A woman who adopted her granddaughter after her son’s death in Iraq stabbed the 7-year-old girl in the chest, then set fire to their home in an apparent murder-suicide, authorities said Monday.

Janice Robbins, 63, left a suicide note in her pickup truck before killing her granddaughter, Abby Robbins, and herself on Saturday, Faulkner County sheriff’s spokesman Maj. Andy Shock said. In the note, she wrote that she didn’t want to leave the girl behind.

Robbins stabbed the girl once in the chest and had no wounds herself. The coroner determined that both were killed by the smoke or fire, after finding soot in the girl’s lungs that indicated she was breathing during the fire.

Abby’s father, Army Staff Sgt. William T. “Terry” Robbins, was shot and killed by a fellow soldier in Iraq in 2005 during a dispute over alcohol. Shock said Janice Robbins had another son who had also died.