Feature Channels: Cardiovascular Health

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Star role for ‘Wars2’ gene in heart disease risk

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Investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have identified a developmental cause of adult-onset cardiac hypertrophy, a dangerous thickening of the heart muscle that can lead to heart failure and death. Reported online in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, the new findings could lead to targeted therapies for this condition.

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Why do women have lower rates of heart failure than men for most of their lives? University of Guelph researchers have uncovered a possible clue – an actin binding protein called “CapZ” that also protects against heart attacks.Now they’ll be studying how its levels are affected by gender and aging, backed by a prestigious Catalyst Grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Their research may lead to new therapeutic treatments for reducing heart problems and extending lives of both men and women.

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Rush University Medical Center received the ELSO Award for Excellence in Life Support – the most prestigious designation in critical care by the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization. Rush is the only full service adult and pediatric academic medical center in Chicago and Illinois to receive the Designated Gold Level Center of Excellence designation.

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A team of seven researchers led by the University of Delaware’s Shannon Robson found that parent-child diet quality and calories consumed are related in significant ways. The discovery could lead to better strategies as the nation works to address the growing public health problems of obesity and related conditions such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

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Norton Healthcare has awarded grants to six researchers at the University of Louisville to further pediatric research in a variety of areas.

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Loyola Medicine will be among the first health systems in the country to offer heart patients a new stent that is absorbed by the body. “Patients will demand this device once they understand the limitations of metal stents,” said cardiologist Fred Leya, MD.

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Keeping count of daily steps and boosting physical activity can really pay off for children with type 1 diabetes, according to new research from the University of Adelaide and the Women's and Children's Hospital.

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Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol dependence (AD) are two of the most common and debilitating disorders diagnosed among American military veterans. AD and PTSD often occur together, and this co-occurrence has a worse prognosis than either disorder alone. Alcohol craving is related to relapse, but the relationship between PTSD symptoms, craving, and relapse is not well understood. This study is the first to explore the effects of trauma-induced and stress-induced imagery on alcohol craving, affect, and cardiovascular and cortisol responses in a laboratory setting.

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While strokes are known to increase risk for dementia, much less is known about diseases of large and small blood vessels in the brain, separate from stroke, and how they relate to dementia. Diseased blood vessels in the brain itself, which commonly is found in elderly people, may contribute more significantly to Alzheimer's disease dementia than was previously believed, according to new study results published in June in The Lancet Neurology, a British medical journal.

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Changing just one seated meeting per week at work into a walking meeting increased the work-related physical activity levels of white-collar workers by 10 minutes, according to a new study published by public health researchers with the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. The study, published June 24, 2016 in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's journal Preventing Chronic Disease, suggests a possible new health promotion approach to improving the health of millions of white-collar workers who spend most of their workdays sitting in chairs.

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A study published in the American Journal of Critical Care found a remarkably high prevalence of delirium in a small cohort of critically ill patients treated with therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest.

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The discovery of a key control point in the formation of new blood vessels in the heart could lead to new drugs that minimize the damage caused by heart attacks. The advance, published in Nature Communications, comes from the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and Stanford University, and offers a novel approach to treat heart disease.

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TCT (Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics), is the annual Scientific Symposium of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF). It is the world’s premier educational meeting specializing in interventional cardiovascular medicine and attracts nearly 12,000 attendees from all over the world. Every year, TCT features major medical research breakthroughs and gathers leading researchers and clinicians from around the world to present and discuss the latest evidence-based research in the field.

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A research team led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Seoul National University has developed a new electric mesh device that can be wrapped around the heart to deliver electrical impulses and improve cardiac function in experimental models of heart failure. The study points to a potential new way of improving heart function and treating dangerous arrhythmias by compensating for damaged cardiac muscle and enabling healthy heart muscle to work more efficiently.

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Toronto Rehab researchers have discovered a new approach for determining which patient populations benefit most from cardiac rehabilitation.

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Researchers discover a new way to keep the heart pumping, which could lead to new drugs for heart disease.

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Scientists and doctors in recent decades have made vast leaps in the treatment of cardiac problems - particularly with the development in recent years of so-called "cardiac patches," swaths of engineered heart tissue that can replace heart muscle damaged during a heart attack.

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A global consortium of researchers banded together to conduct an epidemiological study analyzing specific omega-3 fatty acid biomarkers and heart disease. They found that blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids from seafood and plant-based foods are associated with a lower risk of fatal heart attack.

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The potential promise of targeting non-muscle cells in the heart responsible for cardiac scarring could lead to new treatments for heart disease, Virginia Tech researchers say in a review paper.

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Highlight • Diabetes and kidney disease, separately and together, were linked with increased risks of stroke, coronary heart disease, and cardiovascular mortality in African Americans living in Mississippi.

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A Loyola Medicine liver transplant patient won three medals and a heart transplant won one medal during the 2016 Transplant Games.

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By better understanding daily activity levels and heart rate patterns of those who suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), scientists hope to discover more about this complex illness condition.

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Dr. John J. Warner, Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of UT Southwestern Medical Center University Hospitals, will become President-Elect of the American Heart Association on July 1 for 2016-2017, then serve as President of the AHA for the 2017-2018 year.

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Raymond R. Townsend, MD, director of the Hypertension Program and a professor of Medicine in Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named the 2016 Physician of the Year Award of the American Heart Association (AHA).

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Having diabetes increases the risk of dying from the effects of a heart attack by around 50 per cent, according to a widespread study.

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A UCLA-led study estimates that almost 28,500 deaths could be prevented each year in the U.S. through use of a new FDA-approved class of cardiovascular medication that helps reduce mortality in patients diagnosed with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction, the percentage of blood pumped from the heart with each contraction.

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Researchers at the George Washington University received $1.6 million from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to find ways to restore parasympathetic activity to the heart through oxytocin neuron activation. This heart-brain connection could improve cardiac function during heart failure.

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In a study appearing in the June 21 issue of JAMA, Peter Ganz, M.D., of the University of California-San Francisco, and colleagues conducted a study to develop and validate a score to predict risk of cardiovascular outcomes among patients with coronary heart disease using analysis of circulating proteins.

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A University of North Carolina School of Medicine scientist has been awarded an inaugural global award from Science and Science Translational Medicine and Boyalife for her research in healing damaged heart muscle.

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Low dose aspirin is recommended by clinicians as a preventive measure for patients who have already had a heart attack or stroke, but the risk of taking low-dose aspirin to prevent or delay a first heart attack or stroke is less clear, as the benefit for reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) must be balanced with the increased risk of gastrointestinal or other bleeding. To help clinicians and patients make informed decisions about aspirin use, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital have developed a new, free, mobile app, "Aspirin-Guide" that calculates both the CVD risk score and the bleeding risk score for the individual patient, and helps clinicians decide which patients are appropriate candidates for the use of low-dose aspirin (75 to 81 mg daily).

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Loyola University Chicago is hosting a June 22 workshop on three giant proteins that play critical roles in heart disease. The conference is titled, "Titin and its binding partners, myosin binding protein-C and obscurin in health and disease."

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The heart is the only muscle that contracts and relaxes continuously over a lifetime to pump oxygen-rich blood to the body’s organs. Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center now have identified a previously unrecognized enzyme that could optimize contraction and lead to new strategies to treat heart failure.

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Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine report that more than 1 in 3 atrial fibrillation (AF) patients at intermediate to high risk for stroke are treated with aspirin alone, despite previous data showing this therapy to be inferior to blood thinners.

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VentureMed Group, Ltd., a medical device company based in northwest Ohio, has received 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the commercial distribution of a new surgical device for treating peripheral artery disease (PAD). It’s called the FLEX Scoring Catheter® and was developed by ProMedica Vascular Surgeon John Pigott, MD, as an alternative to balloon-based scoring with a one-size-fits-all platform technology.

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PinnacleHealth enrolled the first patient nationally in a new clinical trial investigating a larger size of the Medtronic CoreValve® Evolut® R System—the Evolut R 34mm System.

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Measuring antibody levels in the blood could be used to detect a person’s heart attack risk after researchers, part-funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), discovered that higher levels of these antibodies are linked to a lower heart attack risk.

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Jersey Shore University Medical Center and Ocean Medical Center, both part of Meridian CardioVascular Network, have received the Get With The Guidelines®-Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award for implementing specific quality improvement measures outlined by the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology Foundation’s secondary prevention guidelines for patients with heart failure.

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Dr. Douglas Lee, an internationally-known Peter Munk Cardiac Centre cardiologist and scientist, has been selected as first-ever chair for the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research, a Toronto collaboration aiming to transform the care of children and adults with heart failure.

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Riverview Medical Center, part of Meridian CardioVascular Network, has received the Get With The Guidelines®-Heart Failure Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award for implementing specific quality improvement measures outlined by the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology Foundation’s secondary prevention guidelines for patients with heart failure.

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In this month’s release, find new embargoed research about return on investment in public health; cardiovascular risks for U.S. women; and effects of increased minimum wage on infant mortality.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins report that a type of lab-grown human nerve cells can partner with heart muscle cells to stimulate contractions. Because the heart-thumping nerve cells were derived from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, the researchers believe the cells — known as sympathetic nerve cells — will allow them to grow nerve cells that replicate particular patients’ diseases of the nervous system.

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Click here to go directly to the Diabetes News Source on Newswise

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The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Hospital, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, and Lancaster General Hospital have received Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke Quality Achievement Awards from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association

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Women who put in long hours for the bulk of their careers may pay a steep price: life-threatening illnesses, including heart disease and cancer. Work weeks that averaged 60 hours or more over three decades appear to triple the risk of diabetes, cancer, heart trouble and arthritis for women, according to new research from The Ohio State University.

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Researchers at the University of Missouri have found that Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1), a protein that is naturally found in high levels among adolescents, can help prevent arteries from clogging. They say that increasing atherosclerosis patients’ levels of the protein could reduce the amount of plaque buildup in their arteries, lowering their risk of heart disease.

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Spirituality plays a central role in many aspects of African-American culture, and UAB School of Nursing postdoctoral scholar Deborah Ejem, Ph.D., will explore how significant a factor it is.

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The Nancy and Harold Zirkin Heart & Vascular Hospital is opening in July on the campus of MedStar Washington Hospital Center, the Washington region’s highly regarded pioneer in cardiovascular care. The 164-bed state-of-the-art facility is the first and only heart and vascular hospital in the nation’s capital.