Feature Channels: Cardiovascular Health

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Hospitals that do not have cardiac surgery capability can perform nonemergency angioplasty and stent implantation as safely as hospitals that do offer cardiac surgery. That is the finding of the nation’s first large, randomized study to assess whether patients do just as well having nonemergency angioplasty performed at smaller, community hospitals that do not offer cardiac surgery.

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Highlights: 1) A test done mid-pregnancy accurately predicts which women will later develop preeclampsia, a late-pregnancy disorder characterized by high blood pressure and excess protein in the urine. Left untreated, preeclampsia can lead to serious—even fatal—complications for a pregnant woman and her baby. 2) Women with high blood pressure during pregnancy risk experiencing high blood pressure, kidney problems, and stroke in the future compared to women with normal blood pressure during pregnancy.

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According to research presented this week at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Scientific Meeting in Chicago, patients with rheumatoid arthritis who have low levels of inflammatory disease activity have lower risk for heart complications and stroke.

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Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine researchers have discovered that the infiltration of white blood cells into an expectant mother’s blood vessels may explain high blood pressure in pregnancy.

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A new therapy being studied in non-human primates by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and colleagues is demonstrating promise as a potential tool for combating cardiovascular disease by increasing good cholesterol and lowering triglycerides in the blood.

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Patients with certain genes or specific factors related to use of the anti-clotting drug clopidogrel are more likely to experience a blood clot within a coronary stent shortly after placement, according to a study in the October 26 issue of JAMA.

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In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have discovered several gene variants contributing to early stent thrombosis (ST), a devastating and often deadly complication after coronary stent implantation in people with coronary artery disease.

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1) Patients who take at least one blood pressure-lowering medication at bedtime have better control of their blood pressure and are less likely to experience heart problems than patients who take medications in the morning. 2) Sleep-time blood pressure is a better measure of heart health than wake-time blood pressure. 3) About one out of three U.S. adults has high blood pressure.

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Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center today announce findings published in the October 20 issue of Nature that show for the first time the inhibition of both microRNA-33a and microRNA-33b (miR-33a/b) with chemically modified anti-miR oligonucleotides markedly suppress triglyceride levels and cause a sustained increase in high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) “good” cholesterol.

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Presentation by leading expert in reproductive endocrinology among highlights at meeting sponsored by the American Physiological Society.

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MRI scanning could become a powerful new tool for assessing how well cholesterol drugs are working, according to a Loyola University Health System cardiologist who co-authored an MRI study of patients taking cholesterol medications.

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Cardiovascular disease and other gender-specific conditions – such as menopause, pregnancy, depression, and obesity – will be explored in depth at a two day conference being sponsored by the American Physiology Society

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Older patients who happened to have been taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs when admitted to the hospital with serious head injuries were 76 percent more likely to survive than those not taking the drugs, according to results of a Johns Hopkins study.

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Doctors at Johns Hopkins have shown that during an increasingly popular type of breast-reconstruction surgery, they can safely preserve the internal mammary artery, in case it is needed for future cardiac surgery.

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A long-held mantra suggests that you can't change your family, the genes they pass on, or the effect of these genes. Now, an international team of scientists, led by researchers at McMaster and McGill universities, is attacking that belief. The researchers discovered the gene that is the strongest marker for heart disease can actually be modified by generous amounts of fruit and raw vegetables. The results of their study are published in the current issue of the journal PLoS Medicine.

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A minimally invasive emergency procedure is saving the lives of patients with ruptured aortic aneurysms.

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Patients who take certain popular types of blood pressure medication once a day are able to achieve somewhat better control of their hypertension if they take their daily dose at bedtime, according to a new systematic review.

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A new study from the University of Adelaide shows the parents of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are more likely to have some form of cardiovascular disease.

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A recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM) found that shift work at a young age is associated with elevated long-term cortisol levels and increased BMI. Previous studies have shown that long-term elevated cortisol levels lead to increased abdominal obesity, hypertension, diabetes and cardiovascular risk.

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In a paper published in the September 30 issue of the journal Cell, researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and colleagues offer an explanation, and a framework that could lead to dietary supplements designed to treat obesity at the molecular level.

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Even people with blood pressure that is slightly above normal may be at an increased risk of stroke, according to a review of studies published in the September 28, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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People with prehypertension have a 55 percent higher risk of experiencing a future stroke than people without prehypertension, report researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in a new meta-analysis of scientific literature published in the September 28 online issue of the journal Neurology.

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Each year in the United States, more than 200,000 people have a cardiac defibrillator implanted in their chest to deliver a high-voltage shock to prevent sudden cardiac death from a life-threatening arrhythmia. While it’s a necessary and effective preventive therapy, those who’ve experienced a defibrillator shock say it’s painful, and some studies suggest that the shock can damage heart muscle.

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Johns Hopkins experts in arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia (ARVD) have defined a set of criteria that could be used to assess a patient’s need for an implanted defibrillator to prevent sudden death. In a study to be published in the September 27 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that is now online, the researchers report that using those criteria, they were able to separate the patients at high risk for a life-threatening irregular heart rhythm from those with low risk.

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Research suggests that faulty filtration allows detrimental enzymes to wreak havoc on body's fluid balance.

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Among patients with acute coronary syndromes undergoing a procedure such as angioplasty, those who received platelet function tests before receiving antithrombotic therapy to determine appropriate clopidogrel dosing and who had high residual platelet reactivity (platelets resistant to antithrombotic therapy) were at an increased risk of an ischemic event at short- and long-term follow-up of up to 2 years, according to a study in the September 21 issue of JAMA.

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Loyola University Chicago researchers are reporting a possible new blood test to help diagnose heart attacks. They found that a large protein known as cardiac myosin binding protein-C (cMyBP-C) is released to the blood following a heart attack.

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A UCSF study holds clues to why an emerging clinical trials option for heart attack patients has not been as successful as anticipated. Treatment of human hearts with bone marrow cells has led to limited to no success in improving their heart function even though a similar method has been much more effective in rodents.

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Expert Bertram Pitt reviews the data from three prominent studies during a presentation on aldosterone antagonists in the treatment of heart failure.

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UCLA researchers have found that the hormone estrogen may help reverse advanced pulmonary hypertension, a rare and serious condition that affects 2 to 3 million individuals in the U.S., mostly women, and can lead to heart failure. Published in the Sept. 15 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the preclinical study shows that in rats, estrogen treatment can reverse the progression of pulmonary hypertension to heart failure and can restore lung and ventricle structure and function.

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Heart specialists at Johns Hopkins have figured out how a widely used pacemaker for heart failure, which makes both sides of the heart beat together to pump effectively, works at the biological level. Their findings, published in the September 14 issue of Science Translational Medicine, may open the door to drugs or genetic therapies that mimic the effect of the pacemaker and to new ways to use pacemakers for a wider range of heart failure patients.

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Stroke is a leading cause of death and serious long-term disability in the U.S. and the recurrence rate after five years is approximately 33%. Increased utilization of statins for patients with stroke will produce statistically significant and clinically important reductions in their risks of future stroke, heart attack and death from cardiovascular disease.

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Loyola University Medical Center is testing a high-tech catheter device that's intended to improve outcomes of patients treated for atrial fibrillation, the most common irregular heartbeat.

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While the incidence of the life-threatening condition of aortic dissection is significantly higher than in the general population, it remains low among patients with the congenital heart defect, bicuspid aortic valve; however, the incidence of aortic aneurysms is significantly high, according to a study in the September 14 issue of JAMA.

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Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have for the first time used several imaging techniques to prove the efficacy of a promising new treatment for atherosclerosis—the build-up of plaque in artery walls that can lead to a heart attack.

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People with high cholesterol may have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published in the September 13, 2011, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have identified a new drug target that may treat and/or prevent heart failure, published in this week's Nature.

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The "white-coat effect" is not reserved for only the human patients who see their blood pressure rise in response to the stress of a doctor visit.

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Contradicting the long-held medical belief that the risk of cardiovascular death for women spikes sharply after menopause, new research from Johns Hopkins suggests instead that heart disease mortality rates in women progress at a constant rate as they age.

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African-Americans and country folk outside the so-called “stroke belt” are at higher risk for stroke death than other populations, a large new study finds.

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The potato’s stereotype as a fattening food for health-conscious folks to avoid is getting another revision today as scientists report that just a couple servings of spuds a day reduces blood pressure almost as much as oatmeal without causing weight gain. Scientists reported on the research, done on a group of overweight people with high blood pressure, at the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), being held here this week.

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Researchers with the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium, which includes UAB, report in the New England Journal of Medicine on the first two large-scale ROC trials. Both trials were evaluating new strategies for cardiopulmonary resuscitation following cardiac arrest.

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Kinesiology professor Michael Brown has found that differences in the way African American cells respond to inflammation could be a cause of higher rates of hypertension among this group.

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58 year old Henry Gibbs is a ballroom dancer, but he was forced to hang up his dancing shoes when a circulation condition,common among older adults, caused him severe leg pain and cramping. He went to the new University of Michigan Multi-Disciplinary Peripheral Arterial Disease Management Program and today, he’s back to pain free legs, loving life...and gliding his dancing partner across the floor.

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Heart rate and blood pressure regulation may hold the key to treating unexplained chronic nausea in children. In a new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, a drug commonly used to treat a condition known as orthostatic intolerance (OI), which causes dizziness and occasional fainting when patients stand for long periods, was shown to reduce debilitating chronic nausea in patients.

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New research from the Jefferson Heart Institute shows that patients in the United States who receive cardiac electrophysiological devices (CIEDs), including permanent pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) are now at greater risk of contracting an infection over the life span of the device.

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Giving your heart to a supportive spouse turns out to be an excellent way to stay alive, according to new research from the University of Rochester. Happily wedded people who undergo coronary bypass surgery are more than three times as likely to be alive 15 years later as their unmarried counterparts, reports a study published online August 22 in Health Psychology, a publication of the American Psychological Association.

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By employing optogenetics, a new field that uses genetically altered cells to respond to light, researchers at Stony Brook University have demonstrated a way to control cell excitation and contraction in cardiac muscle cells.

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The presence of calcium in coronary arteries is a much better predictor of heart attack and stroke than C-reactive protein among people with normal levels of LDL cholesterol, according to a study of more than 2,000 people led by a Johns Hopkins heart specialist.

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For many patients, cholesterol-lowering statin drugs can reduce the risk of strokes as well as heart attacks. But Loyola University Health System neurologists caution that statins may not be appropriate for certain categories of patients who are at-risk for stroke.