Asthma that requires daily medication is associated with a significantly higher risk of heart attack or stroke, according to a new study from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH).
lack patients who have been diagnosed with heart failure are no less likely than white patients to get atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia), according to a new study led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, which was presented today at the 2014 Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association. These findings run counter to previous studies, which have found that black patients with heart failure tend to have less atrial fibrillation problems than white patients.
Emergency rooms are testing many patients for markers of acute coronary syndrome who show no signs of having suffered a heart attack, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found.
Routine heart imaging screenings for people with diabetes at high risk to experience a cardiac event, but who have no symptoms of heart disease, does not help them avoid heart attacks, hospitalization for unstable angina or cardiac death, according to a major new study.
Yasuo Ikeda, M.D., of Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, and colleagues examined whether once-daily, low-dose aspirin would reduce the total number of cardiovascular (CV) events (death from CV causes, nonfatal heart attack or stroke) compared with no aspirin in Japanese patients 60 years or older with hypertension, diabetes, or poor cholesterol or triglyceride levels.
Joseph B. Muhlestein, M.D., of the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute, Murray, Utah, and colleagues examined whether screening patients with diabetes deemed to be at high cardiac risk with coronary computed tomographic angiography (CCTA) would result in a significant longterm reduction in death, heart attack, or hospitalization for unstable angina.
Fatigue, increased irritability, and feeling demoralized, may raise a healthy man or woman’s risk of first-time cardiovascular disease by 36 percent, according to a study led by researchers at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s and Mount Sinai Roosevelt hospitals presented on Nov. 17 at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2014 in Chicago, IL.
Mikhail Kosiborod, M.D., of Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute, Kansas City, and colleagues evaluated the efficacy and safety of the drug zirconium cyclosilicate in patients with hyperkalemia (higher than normal potassium levels). The study appears in JAMA and is being released to coincide with its presentation at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2014.
Results from the DAPT Study were announced in November in multiple presentations at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2014. Results from the primary study analysis were concurrently published in The New England Journal of Medicine, and an investigator-led meta-analysis was published in The Lancet.
A new study by University of North Carolina School of Medicine researchers confirms their surprising earlier finding: Patients who suffer a STEMI heart attack while while in the hospital for something else are more likely to die than patients who have the same type of heart attack outside the hospital.
Duk-Woo Park, M.D., of the University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea, and Manesh R. Patel, M.D., of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, N.C., and colleagues investigated the incidence, extent, and location of obstructive non-infarct-related artery (IRA) disease and compared 30-day mortality according to the presence of non-IRA disease in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction.
Lars H. Lund, M.D., Ph.D., of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues conducted a study to examine whether beta-blockers are associated with reduced mortality in heart failure patients with preserved ejection fraction (a measure of how well the left ventricle of the heart pumps with each contraction).The study appears in the November 19 issue of JAMA, a cardiovascular disease theme issue.
Vivek Y. Reddy, M.D., of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, and colleagues examined the long-term efficacy and safety, compared to warfarin, of a device to achieve left atrial appendage closure in patients with atrial fibrillation. The study appears in the November 19 issue of JAMA, a cardiovascular disease theme issue.
Prashant Kaul, M.D., of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and colleagues conducted a study to define the incidence and treatment and outcomes of patients who experience a certain type of heart attack during hospitalization for conditions other than acute coronary syndromes. The study appears in the November 19 issue of JAMA, a cardiovascular disease theme issue.
A blocked artery causes a deadly kind of heart attack known as STEMI, and a rapid response to clear the blockage saves lives.
But in more than half of cases studied recently by Duke Medicine researchers, one or both of the patient’s other arteries were also obstructed, raising questions about whether and when additional procedures might be undertaken.
Members of the public in counties with higher median household incomes are more likely to step into action to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, when they witness someone have a cardiac arrest, according to a new study led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, which was presented today at the American Heart Association’s Resuscitation Science Symposium 2014.
Hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil®), especially at the higher standard dose of 400 mg per day, independently decreases the risk of cardiovascular morbidity in people with rheumatoid arthritis, according to new research findings presented this week at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting in Boston.
As the holidays approach, it’s easy to slip into bad eating habits. However, poor diet increases the risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and poor circulation – three major factors that affect overall heart health. In the November issue of Food Technology magazine published by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), Contributing Editor Linda Milo Ohr writes that adding certain nutrients and foods to the diet that may decrease risk for heart disease, which is the number one cause of death in the United States.
A surgical team at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre led by internationally-acclaimed cardiovascular surgeon, Dr. Vivek Rao, has successfully implanted a novel mechanical device, the HeartMate IIITM, into a patient with advanced heart failure.
A potentially groundbreaking study by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center scientists, published online today in the journal PLOS ONE, suggests that the worst effects of reperfusion injury may be prevented with a safe, simple solution: a dose of iodide, a chemical form of the element added to ordinary table salt.
By transforming human scar cells into blood vessel cells, scientists may have discovered a new way to repair damaged tissue. The method, described in an upcoming issue of Circulation (early online), appeared to improve blood flow, oxygenation, and nutrition to areas in need.
For years, a multidisciplinary team of Johns Hopkins researchers has tracked an elusive creature, a complex of proteins thought to be at fault in some cases of sudden cardiac death. As they report Nov. 5 in the online edition of Nature Communications, they have finally captured images of the complex. Those images reveal the connection between some genetic mutations and electrical abnormalities of the heart and provide a starting point for designing therapies.
Sargent College of Boston University researchers look for the root cause of age-related aortic stiffness—an early sign cardiovascular disease—and uncover a potential therapeutic target for reducing or preventing its development. The article is published in AJP-Heart and Circulatory Physiology and is highlighted as part of the APSselect program.
The heart holds its own pool of immune cells capable of helping it heal after injury, according to new research in mice at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Myasthenia gravis is a disorder than can be associated with abnormal function outside of skeletal muscle. Two studies presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Neuromuscular & Electrodiagnostic Medicine (AANEM) demonstrate that there is a significant proportion of myasthenia patients with arrhythmias and co-morbid inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
In an analysis that included approximately 35,000 participants, genetic predisposition to elevated low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) was associated with aortic valve calcium and narrowing of the aortic valve, findings that support a causal association between LDL-C and aortic valve disease, according to a study appearing in JAMA. The study is being released to coincide with its presentation at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress.
Researchers find the nitrate in beetroot targets fast-twitch muscles, increasing the blood flow to muscles that receive less oxygen. This can increase high-intensity athletic performance and improve quality of life of heart failure patients.
Future prevention and treatment strategies for vascular diseases may lie in the evaluation of early brain imaging tests long before heart attacks or strokes occur, according to a systematic review conducted by a team of cardiologists, neuroscientists, and psychiatrists from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published in the October issue of JACC Cardiovascular Imaging.
Heart attacks are not as connected to family history and genetics as may have been previously believed, according to a new study by researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City.
UCLA stem cell researcher Dr. Arjun Deb has discovered that some scar-forming cells in the heart, known as fibroblasts, have the ability to become endothelial cells (the cells that form blood vessels), and this study can point the way toward a new strategy for treating patients after a heart attack.
Researchers have known for decades that stress contributes to heart disease. But a new analysis by researchers at Duke Medicine shows mental stress may tax women’s hearts more than men’s.
The research appears online Oct. 13, 2014, in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Heart attack survivors often experience dangerous heart rhythm disturbances during treatment designed to restore blood flow to the injured heart muscle, a common and confounding complication of an otherwise lifesaving intervention.
Now a duo of Johns Hopkins researchers working with rat heart cells have shown that such post-heart attack arrhythmias are likely triggered by something akin to a power grid failure inside the injured cardiac cells.
In a new study recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center concluded that overuse of cardiac stress testing with imaging has led to rising healthcare costs and unnecessary radiation exposure to patients.
Rates of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest are elevated after days with high levels of air pollutants, reports a Japanese study in the October Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).
A new, implantable device to control heart failure is showing promising results in the first trial to determine safety and effectiveness in patients, according to lead researcher Dr. William Abraham of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.
The disease, which has been named "Chronic Atrial Intestinal Dysrhythmia syndrome" (CAID), is a serious condition caused by a rare genetic mutation. This finding demonstrates that heart and guts rhythmic contractions are closely linked by a single gene in the human body, as shown in a study published on October 5, 2014 in Nature Genetics.
New research by scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM) and the Ottawa Heart Institute has uncovered a new pathway by which the brain uses an unusual steroid to control blood pressure.
Leading Canadian spinal cord injury (SCI) experts have launched the unprecedented Spinal Cord Injury: A Manifesto for Change—a call to action and a plea for Canadian health-care providers and stakeholders to work in coordination to improve care and the health of people living with SCI in Canada.
Among patients ages 50 to 69 years who underwent aortic valve replacement with bioprosthetic (made primarily with tissue) compared with mechanical prosthetic valves, there was no significant difference in 15-year survival or stroke, although patients in the bioprosthetic valve group had a greater likelihood of reoperation but a lower likelihood of major bleeding, according to a study in the October 1 issue of JAMA.
Researchers examined systemic delivery of a vector to replace the enzyme IDUA, which is deficient in patients with a rare enzyme deficiency disorder. The works describes how an injection of a vector expressing the IDUA enzyme to the liver can prevent most of the systemic manifestations of the disease, including those found in the heart.
It's a simple message: Call 9-1-1 at the first warning signs of a heart attack. Unfortunately, many still choose to either drive to the hospital, or wait to see if the symptoms disappear. New research from the MedStar Heart & Vascular Institute reconfirms relying on emergency medical services helps heart attack patients avoid delays and expedite treatment.
The American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) has released new evidence-based guidelines for the prevention and treatment of perioperative and postoperative atrial fibrillation (POAF) and flutter for thoracic surgical procedures. The guidelines are published in The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.
Two independent groups of researchers led by Sidney (Wally) Whiteheart, PhD, of the University of Kentucky, and Charles Lowenstein, MD, of the University of Rochester, have published important studies exploring the role that a gene called STXBP5 plays in the development of cardiovascular disease.
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that the most common variant of the circulating protein apolipoprotein E, called apoE3, helps repair the lining of blood vessels.
Among older adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), particularly those with asthma, newly prescribed long-acting beta-agonists (LABAs) and inhaled corticosteroid combination therapy, compared with newly prescribed LABAs alone, was associated with a lower risk of death or COPD hospitalization, according to a study in the September 17 issue of JAMA.
In an analysis of the results of nearly 50 randomized trials that examined treatments of venous thromboembolisms (blood clot in a vein), there were no significant differences in clinical and safety outcomes associated with most treatment strategies when compared with the low-molecular-weight heparin-vitamin K antagonist combination, according to a study in the September 17 issue of JAMA.