Feature Channels: Heart Disease

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The cost of treating women for heart disease in 2008 was $43.6 billion, leading a list of the top 10 most expensive conditions for women.

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A recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM) found that adults who consumed high fructose corn syrup for two weeks as 25 percent of their daily calorie requirement had increased blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, which have been shown to be indicators of increased risk for heart disease.

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While there are many traits that are common among heart attack patients – both those who survive the event and those who die suddenly – researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have identified several traits that can be used to differentiate between risk of dying suddenly versus living through a heart attack.

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A new evidence review finds that a modified fat diet — and not a low fat diet — might be the real key to reducing one’s risk of heart disease.

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Despite changes in standard treatment practice guidelines issued by the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association and the European Society of Cardiology several years ago, there has been no meaningful change in the nation’s practice of opening completely blocked coronary arteries with balloons and stents in the days after a heart attack, according to a new study published in the July 11, 2011, issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

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Smoking cigarettes is a dangerous habit that many are struggling to break, but for the smokers who choose to use one of the most popular smoking cessation drugs on the market, new warnings about the risk of serious cardiovascular events are on their way.

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Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found in a Phase II trial that a gene therapy developed at Mount Sinai stabilized or improved cardiac function in people with severe heart failure. Patients receiving a high dose of the therapy, called SERCA2a, experienced substantial clinical benefit and significantly reduced cardiovascular hospitalizations, addressing a critical unmet need in this population. The data are published online in the June 27 issue of the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

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Only about 10 percent of patients with a certain type of heart attack who need to be transferred to another hospital for a PCI (procedures such as balloon angioplasty or stent placement used to open narrowed coronary arteries) are transferred within the recommended time of 30 minutes, according to a study in the June 22/29 issue of JAMA.

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Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one killer of women in the United States. Although scientists have discovered demonstrable sex differences, treatment options remain the same. In response to this important issue, the Society for Women’s Health Research (SWHR) and WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease released the long awaited 2011 10Q Report: Advancing Women’s Heart Health through Improved Research, Diagnosis and Treatment on June 21 to a captivated audience on Capitol Hill.

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A systematic review found that death, stroke and heart attack did not decline significantly in the first few months after starting treatment with statins.

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Leading researchers, scientists, medical and surgical professionals from all over the world gather here at the 28th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) this week (June 12 to June 17) to present new findings on obesity, morbid obesity, bariatric and metabolic surgery.

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A recent National Institutes of Health study released in late May, called AIM-HIGH, showed that Niaspan failed to prevent heart attacks and slightly raised the risk of a stroke when combined with the cholesterol drug Zocor (simvastatin)..

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Cartoid endarterectomy is best choice for women in majority of cases.

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New research finds that gestational diabetes, or pregnancy-related diabetes, may not raise the risk of heart disease independent of other cardiovascular risk factors except in certain high-risk populations, such as Hispanics. The results will be presented Monday at The Endocrine Society’s 93rd Annual Meeting in Boston.

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Less invasive catheter-based aortic valve replacement and open valve-replacement surgery have a similar one-year survival for patients at high risk for surgery.

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Loyola University Health System physician discusses women and coronary artery disease.

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Coronary computed tomographic (CT) angiography, which can detect plaque buildup in heart vessels, is sometimes used as a screening tool to assess the risk for a heart attack. However, the usefulness of the test on low-risk patients who do not have coronary symptoms, such as chest pain, has been unclear. In the first large population study to assess the impact of the test on physicians and patients, Johns Hopkins cardiologists found that having CT angiography leads to more prescriptions for cholesterol-lowering medications and aspirin, as well as more stress tests, nuclear medicine scans and invasive catheterizations. However, the incidence of heart attacks or cardiac death among people in the study was the same, whether or not patients had a CT angiography test.

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Researchers at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre discovered a protein switch which can trigger a cascade of events leading to heart failure, pointing to a new direction for drug development.

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The number of young adults in the U.S. with high blood pressure may be much higher than previously reported. A new study analyzed data on more than 14,000 people between 24 and 32 years old. Nineteen percent had elevated blood pressure. The findings illustrate how the processes that trigger serious chronic illnesses in older adults may begin early in life.

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A new study by University of Virginia Health System researchers adds to mounting evidence that ezetimibe may not halt significant artery wall thickening, or atherosclerosis, in some patients. Despite the medication’s proven effectiveness in lowering LDL cholesterol, UVA researchers found a notable progression of atherosclerosis in patients who added ezetimibe to their pre-existing cholesterol-lowering statin medication therapy.

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In two separate studies, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found that how fast a middle-age person can run a mile can help predict the risk of dying of heart attack or stroke decades later for men and could be an early indicator of cardiovascular disease for women.

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University of Maryland-led team’s study of calcium release events in heart cells that are smaller than well-known sparks may lead to new cardiovascular therapies.

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Women with congestive heart failure who repress their emotions, especially anger, are more likely than emotionally expressive women to experience symptoms of depression associated with knowledge about their disease, according to new research.

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Contrary to what we’ve been told, eliminating or severely limiting fats from the diet may not be beneficial to cardiac function in patients suffering from heart failure, a study at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine reports.

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One of the largest studies of its kind has found that people with coronary artery disease who have even a modest beer belly or muffin top are at higher risk for death than people whose fat collects elsewhere. The effect was observed even in patients with a normal Body Mass Index (BMI).

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Scientists at Johns Hopkins have shown in laboratory experiments in mice that blocking the action of a signaling protein deep inside the heart’s muscle cells blunts the most serious ill effects of high blood pressure on the heart. These include heart muscle enlargement, scar tissue formation and loss of blood vessel growth.

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A gene known to be important in cardiac development has been newly associated with congenital heart malformations that result in obstruction of the left ventricular outflow tract. These are the findings from a study conducted by Nationwide Children’s Hospital and appearing in the journal Birth Defects Research Part A.

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Declining rates of hospitalization have discouraged primary care doctors from seeing their patients in the hospital and encouraged the growing use of “hospitalists,” a specialty focused on the care of hospitalized patients. Further developments in the field mean that frequently hospitalized patients also may need a specialist focused on their care.

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Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is common and linked with heart disease in the very elderly, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN).

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Fatty liver disease is one of the best markers of coronary artery disease. It can also lead to cirrhosis, fibrosis and liver failutre.

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Elizabeth Taylor died of congestive heart failure (CHF) at the age of 79 on March 23. Her death raises awareness of this serious condition that affects an estimated five million Americans. What is CHF and can it be prevented?

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A new study of coronary artery calcium scanning – a simple, noninvasive test that gives patients baseline information about plaque in their coronary arteries—has shown that the scan helps them make heart-healthy lifestyle changes and lower their heart disease risk factors.

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A daily dose of safflower oil, a common cooking oil, for 16 weeks can improve such health measures as good cholesterol, blood sugar, insulin sensitivity and inflammation in obese postmenopausal women who have Type 2 diabetes, according to new research.

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Sildenafil, a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction and pulmonary hypertension, has another possible use—helping children and young adults with congenital heart disease to better tolerate exercise.

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The Mount Sinai Medical Center has become the first hospital in the United States to perform a cardiac catheterization procedure using the TactiCath force-sensing ablation catheter for the treatment of symptomatic paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF), or periodic rapid and irregular heartbeats. The new procedure will allow physicians to more safely and effectively treat AF, which affects more than two million Americans.

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U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) today reintroduced legislation to ensure that heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are more widely recognized and effectively treated in women.

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Using aspirin for coronary heart prevention is less costly and more effective than doing nothing in men older than 45 with more than 10 percent 10-year-risk of the disease, according to a study by researchers at RTI International, University of Michigan, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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A team of heart experts at Johns Hopkins has found that dual lab tests of blood clotting factors accurately predict the patients whose blood vessels, in particular veins implanted to restore blood flow to the heart during coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), are more likely to fail or become clogged within six months. One test gauges the speed of blood platelet clumping and the other measures the level of a clumping chemical byproduct.

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A study led by the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center found women who received treatment such as an angioplasty had higher unadjusted in-hospital heart attack deaths. But these differences appear to be related to women’s ages and additional health problems – not gender.

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Cross-disciplinary teams of scientists studying genetic pathways that are mutated in many forms of cancer, but which also cause certain forms of congenital heart disease – including hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a thickening of the heart muscle that is the leading cause of sudden death in children and young adults –, have introduced these mutations into mice and successfully treated HCM in the lab.

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Congenital heart diseases affect approximately one in 100 patients, making them the most common type of birth defect and the number-one cause of pediatric deaths.

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Cardiologists and pulmonologists at Rush University Medical Center have teamed up to provide a new and better approach to treating patients with pulmonary hypertension, a disease affecting the heart and lungs. The new Rush Pulmonary Hypertension Clinic brings together a multidisciplinary team of clinicians with specialized training to care for patients with this very complex disease.

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Healthcare practitioners can increase the number of patients with heart disease referred to a cardiac rehabilitation program by 40 per cent, helping them to reduce their risk of dying and improve their quality of life, say researchers at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre.

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A study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine shows that a different metric, a measure of HDL function called cholesterol efflux capacity, is more closely associated with protection against heart disease than HDL cholesterol levels themselves.

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A team of scientists at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere has discovered that a single alteration in the genetic code of about a fourth of African-Americans helps protect them from coronary artery disease, the leading cause of death in Americans of all races.

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Employees with myocardial infarction (heart attack) and other types of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) are a major source of direct and indirect health costs, reports a study in the January Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

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Fruit fly study demonstrates how lipotoxic cardiomyopathy might occur in genetically obese individuals, revealing potential therapeutic targets for fat-related heart disease.

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Scientists coax stem cells (created from skin cells of a patient with an inherited heart disease) into cardiac cells. Method holds promise for personalized medicine, and for studying diseased cells that can’t be easily biopsied.

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Prompt diagnosis and surgery can be lifesaving for older adults with aortic stenosis, according to an article in a recent issue of Medicine®. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading provider of information and business intelligence for students, professionals, and institutions in medicine, nursing, allied health, and pharmacy.

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In a study published in December 2010, in Hypertension, a journal of the American Heart Association, investigators have shown that early treatment with blood pressure-lowering medications provides a long-term benefit of reducing the risk of death from cardiovascular disease. The study was conducted by researchers from the Cardiovascular Institute of New Jersey (CVI) at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, in collaboration with researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Leuven, Belgium.