Evidence suggesting that mild to moderate consumption of wine protects against cardiovascular disease has been accumulating since the early 1990s. Now, however, researchers have shown that wine only protects against cardiovascular disease (CVD) in people who exercise. That was the finding of the In Vino Veritas (IVV) study presented at the European Society for Cardiology Congress in Barcelona on August 31st 2014 by Professor Milos Taborsky from the Czech Republic.
Tag: Heart Health
Mobile App for Emergency Cardiac Care
When dealing with acute cardiovascular diseases, instant access to the best recommendations can save lives. This fact led the Acute Cardiovascular Care Association (ACCA) of the European Society for Cardiology (ESC) to develop a user friendly interactive application that lets healthcare professionals have immediate access to diagnostics pathways on their mobile devices.
New Statin Guidelines an Improvement
New national guidelines can improve the way statin drugs are prescribed to patients at risk for cardiovascular disease, a Yale University study has found.
The research, published August 25th 2014 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, also showed the new guidelines produce only a modest increase in the number of patients being given the drugs.
Crucial Heart-Disease Devices Benefit People of Color
Racial and ethnic minorities who get implantable devices to treat heart failure derive the same survival benefit as white patients, new research shows. But non-white patients are getting the devices at a much lower rate.
The study, one of the largest to compare the survival benefits of the devices by race and ethnicity, looked at 15,000 patients from 167 medical practices across the U.S. The findings are published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Good Neighbors May Curb Heart Attack Risk
Although some studies suggest that the factors such as area violence and noise can negatively affect cardiovascular health, few studies have looked at the potential health enhancing effects of positive local neighborhood characteristics. This prompted the authors of an article published in 2014 in BMJ to track the cardiovascular health of over 5000 US adults with no known heart problems over a period of four years, starting in 2006. Their average age was 70, and almost two thirds were women and married (62%).
Mayo Clinic Challenges Cholesterol Guideline
A Mayo Clinic task force has challenged some recommendations in the updated guideline for cholesterol treatment that was unveiled by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and American Heart Association (AHA) in 2013. The task force concludes, based on current evidence, that not all patients encouraged to take cholesterol-lowering medications such as statins may benefit from them and that the guideline missed some important conditions that might benefit from medication.
A Non-Invasive Procedure That Helps Heart Patients
A minimally invasive procedure can significantly reduce the likelihood of heart disease-related deaths among adults with atrial fibrillation.
A long-term study from the University of Michigan’s Frankel Cardiovascular Center found that the procedure, catheter ablation, helps atrial-fibrillation patients lower their risk of dying from a heart attack or heart failure.
Women With a Heart Attack Fare Worse Than Men
While awareness campaigns may be getting women to go to the hospital more quickly during a heart-attack, a new look at hospital data shows women have longer hospital stays and are more likely than men to die in the hospital after a heart attack.
For the study published online July 21st 2014 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, researchers from Yale School of Medicine analyzed 230,684 hospitalizations for heart attack in patients age 30 to 54 from a total of 1.1 million hospitalizations reported in a national database from 2001 to 2010.
Potassium May Save Lives for Heart Patients on Diuretics
Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that patients taking prescription potassium supplements together with loop diuretics for heart failure have better survival rates than patients taking diuretics without the potassium. The degree of benefit increases with higher diuretic doses. The team, including senior author Sean Hennessy, PharmD, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology in Penn’s Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (CCEB), report their findings in a study published online July 16th 2014 in PLoS ONE.
Niacin Linked to Death Risk
Niacin has been a mainstay of cholesterol therapy for 50 years, but Northwestern Medicine preventive cardiologist Donald Lloyd-Jones, M.D. maintains that the drug should no longer be prescribed for most patients due to potential increased risk of death, dangerous side effects, and no benefit in reducing heart attacks and strokes. His editorial was published in the July 17th 2014 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Cheaper & Better Drug for Heart Attack Procedure
A study done in the UK and published in The Lancet on July 4th 2014 compares outcomes for two drugs used to prevent blood clot formation during emergency heart attack treatment. The study suggests that use of one of the drugs, heparin, could result in improved outcomes such as a reduced rate of repeat heart attacks, compared to the other drug tested, bivalirudin, which is in widespread use in high-income countries and is around 400 times more expensive than heparin.
Unnecessary Blood Tests Waste Money
Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center used two relatively simple tactics to significantly reduce the number of unnecessary blood tests to assess symptoms of heart attack and chest pain and to achieve a large decrease in patient charges.
Women and Heart Disease: A New RIsk
Hormonal changes during menopause could increase a woman’s risk of heart disease, researchers have found.
The study, by investigators from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, was done by using an advanced method to analyze “cholesterol carriers” in the blood. The researchers found that during the transition to menopause, the quality of those carriers degrades.
Investigators said the study showed that the quality of cholesterol carriers could be as important as cholesterol numbers.
For Women, Improving Accuracy of Heart Disease Diagnosis
Diagnosing coronary heart disease in women has become more accurate through gender-specific research that clarifies the role of both obstructive and non-obstructive coronary artery disease as contributors to ischemic heart disease in females, according to a statement published in June 2014 in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.
A Better Assessment Tool For Heart-Disease Risk
An international team of researchers has created a heart disease risk assessment tool designed to better evaluate the likelihood of heart disease in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
People with rheumatoid arthritis are twice as likely as the average person to develop heart problems.
Why Stress & Overexertion Trigger Heart Attacks
Scientists believe they have an explanation for the axiom that stress, emotional shock, and overexertion may trigger heart attacks in vulnerable people. Hormones released during these events appear to cause bacterial biofilms on arterial walls to disperse, allowing plaque deposits to rupture into the bloodstream, according to research published in published in June 2014 in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
Device Can Improve Survival Rates Of Some Heart Patients
Investigators have found that implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) provide improved survival rates among a specific group of heart failure patients.
The findings, published in the June 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, focused on patients with left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF).
A Deadly Protein In The Heart
A genetic variant linked to sudden cardiac death leads to protein overproduction in heart cells, according to a new study.