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Cardiovascular disease (CVD) often starts with the buildup of lipid deposits or plaques within the blood vessel, setting the stage for atherosclerosis. Rupture of these atherosclerotic plaques clot blood vessels and lead to life-threatening conditions including heart attack or stroke. Dyslipidemia, meaning having too much "bad" or atherogenic lipids in the blood, represents the most common cause of CVDs. Accordingly, doctors often prescribe lipid-lowering medications. In two studies, researchers found a novel approach to achieve intensive lipid lowering, which enabled reversal of atherosclerotic plaques in murine disease models. This potential therapy employs a previously unknown function of the essential element...

The suspected health harms of artificial sweeteners are piling up – and now a new study has linked one kind of sugar substitute to higher risks of heart health problems. Physician-scientist Stanley Hazen and colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute wanted to see if they could find any signs that could warn people they were at greater risk of heart attack and stroke. They found it in blood levels of organic compounds used as sweeteners, specifically erythritol; a sweetener commonly used in low sugar, sugar-free, and no-carb foods. Among a group of 1,157 patients undergoing tests at a...

Many cardiovascular diseases, such as atherosclerosis, or "hardening of the arteries," correlate to mitochondrial dysfunction and endothelial impairment in the tissues of the heart and blood vessels. Despite a significant improvement in therapies to treat cardiovascular disease, there is an unmet need to investigate mitochondria as a therapeutic target. A review published recently in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences explores the existing literature on relevant studies and makes recommendations for further study. The authors of the paper propose a closer examination of this relationship between mitochondrial dysfunction, endothelial impairment, and atherosclerosis is necessary in order to identify new precision...

How much water do we need to drink to stay healthy? Studies of hormones are providing diabetes researchers with new answers. Neurotensin and vasopressin are two of the hormones that are being studied by diabetes researchers. Neurotensin is released from the gastrointestinal tract after we have consumed fat. Research has shown that neurotensin can be used as a biomarker to predict the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and fatty liver disease. "Studies have shown that there is an association between raised levels of the hormone after fat consumption and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular...

A combination therapy of aspirin, statins and at least two blood pressure medications given in fixed doses can slash the risk of fatal cardiovascular disease (CVD) by more than half, says an international study led by Hamilton researchers. The fixed-dose combination (FDC) therapies were examined both with and without aspirin versus control groups in a combined analysis of more than 18,000 patients without prior CVD from three large clinical trials. FDCs including aspirin cut the risk of heart attacks by 53 percent, stroke by 51 percent, and deaths from cardiovascular causes by 49 percent. The results were welcomed by international...

“Between 2002 and 2013 statin use in the US nearly doubled, cholesterol levels are falling, yet cardiovascular deaths appear to be on the rise.”

Researchers have found that continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) can improve depression symptoms in patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases. Using data from the Sleep Apnea Cardiovascular Endpoints (SAVE) trial led by Flinders University, the new study has found a significant decrease in cases of depression after patients received CPAP treatment for their sleep apnea. This is by far the largest trial of its type and one of very few studies reporting such an effect, says Professor Doug McEvoy from Flinders University. From detailed analysis of the SAVE data, Flinders University experts and collaborators at...

Our guts are awash in bacteria, and now a new study fingers them as culprits in heart disease. A complicated dance between the microbes and a component of red meat could help explain how the food might cause atherosclerosis. The work also has implications for certain energy drinks and energy supplements, which contain the same nutrient that these bacteria like chasing after. Red meat is considered bad news when it comes to heart health, although studies aren't consistent about how much can hurt and whether it always does. Furthermore, it's not clear which components of meat are doing harm. Various...

New research has uncovered how some cox-2 painkillers increase the risk for both heart attacks and stroke. The once popular cox-2 drugs, Vioxx and Bextra, were pulled off the market in 2004 and 2005, respectively, after research showed that both raised the chances of cardiovascular trouble. Meanwhile, Celebrex, a painkiller in the same drug class that remains on the market, carries a "black box" warning alerting patients to potential heart risks. Now, a team of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia say that, although cox-2 inhibitors are very good at inhibiting the workings of the cox-2 enzyme --...

Last October, embarrassing e-mails leaked from New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene disclosed that officials had stretched the limits of credible science in approving a 2009 antiobesity ad, which depicted a stream of soda pop transforming into human fat as it left the bottle. “The idea of a sugary drink becoming fat is absurd,” a scientific advisor warned the department in one of the e-mails, a view echoed by other experts whom the city consulted. Nevertheless, Gotham’s health commissioner, Thomas Farley, saw the ad as an effective way to scare people into losing weight, whatever its scientific...

How specific digestive tract microbes react to a dietary lipid increases risk of heart attack, stroke and deathA new pathway has been discovered that links a common dietary lipid and intestinal microflora with an increased risk of heart disease, according to a Cleveland Clinic study published in the latest issue of Nature. The study shows that people who eat a diet containing a common nutrient found in animal products (such as eggs, liver and other meats, cheese and other diary products, fish, shellfish) are not predisposed to cardiovascular disease solely on their genetic make-up, but rather, how the micro-organisms that...

In a new study performed in humans, researchers from Karolinska Institutet have determined the age of atherosclerotic plaques by taking advantage of Carbon-14 (14C) residues in the atmosphere, prevailing after the extensive atomic bomb tests in the 50ties and 60ties. The findings, published in the scientific online journal PLoS ONE, suggest that in most people plaque formation occurs during a relatively short and late time period in life of 3-5 years. > "We suspected that the plaque would be substantially younger than the patients, who were on average were 68 years old at surgery, but we were surprised when we...

<p>With courage and care Dr. Ravnskov exposes the lack of experimental evidence for the diet-heart theory, which claims that eating less fat and cholesterol will prevent atheroslcerosis (hardening of the arteries) and myocardial infarctions (heart attacks). By examining original peer-reviewed literature, the author finds no support for the diet-heart theory. He gives examples of scientific fraud among efforts to support the theory, including the deliberate selective omission of data points, and the deliberate assignment of subjects in a clinical trial to treatment or to control groups by physicians with the subject's medical records in hand. He shows how the abstract or conclusions of a number of papers are at odds with the actual data in the papers. He demonstrates how the use of one statistical method in preference to another can give a false impression that there is an effect, where there is, in fact, none. He shows how the reporting of differences in fatality rates by per cent reduction (say, a 50% reduction in relative risk) is actually misleading when the actual death rates are quite small in both the treatment and control groups of subjects in diet or drug studies. For example, a treatment that changes the absolute survival rate over a multi-year period from 99.0% to 99.5% represents a 50% reduction in relative risk, from 1% to 0.5% absolute. This is often described in papers as a 50% reduction in death rate. However, when the difference is barely significant statistically, as was often the case, Ravnskov points out that there is no real reason to recommend adoption of the treatment, especially if there are serious side-effects.</p>

Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease1,2,3,4,5Patty W Siri-Tarino, Qi Sun, Frank B Hu and Ronald M Krauss1 From the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute Oakland CA (PWS-TRMK)the Departments of Nutrition (QSFBH)Epidemiology (FBH) Harvard School of Public Health Boston MA. 2 PWS-T and QS contributed equally to this work. 3 The contents of this article are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official view of the National Center for Research Resources (http://www.ncrr.nih.gov) or the National Institutes of Health. 4 Supported by the National Dairy Council (PWS-T and...

Chinese chemists have made sturdy nanotube sponges that can selectively absorb oil and volatile chemicals in preference to water. The sponges float on water and can absorb up almost 180 times their own weight in oil, giving them great potential for mopping up industrial spillages. 'We are very excited about the potential of our material,' says Anyuan Cao, who led the work at Peking University, Beijing, China. 'The sponges can absorb a variety of oils - from volatile solvents to thick and sticky oil - but they are also elastic and robust. They can be wrung out like towels and re-used,...

(Boston) - Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) in collaboration with researchers from Lahey Clinic Northshore, Peabody, Mass., believe that androgen deficiency might be the underlying cause for a variety of common clinical conditions, including diabetes, erectile dysfunction, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease (CVD). These findings appear in the September/October issue of the Journal of Andrology. Androgens are a steroid hormone, such as testosterone, that controls the development and maintenance of male characteristics. In a number of studies, androgen deficiency has been linked to an increased mortality in men. Testosterone (T) is an anabolic hormone with a wide...

Gene-association studies hint at better ways of treating the leading cause of death, but capitalizing on them is proving to be a slow and difficult process. Erika Check Hayden reports. Cardiovascular conditions are the leading cause of death worldwide.A. MASSEE/SPL As personalized cancer treatment edges into the clinic, doctors and scientists are hoping that cardiovascular disease — the world's top killer — will be next to benefit from genomics.An avalanche of studies has linked genetic variants to various cardiovascular conditions and to patients' responses to commonly prescribed drugs. First up could be genetic guidance for the anti-clotting agents warfarin and...

COPENHAGEN — Rheumatoid arthritis and two other rheumatic diseases are as strong as diabetes as risk factors for cardiovascular disease, prompting a European League Against Rheumatism task force to issue the group's first consensus recommendations for managing cardiovascular risk in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, and psoriatic arthritis. “In our view, rheumatoid arthritis [RA], ankylosing spondylitis [AS], and psoriatic arthritis [PsA] should be seen as new, independent cardiovascular risk factors,” Dr. Michael T. Nurmohamed said at the annual European Congress of Rheumatology. “Very importantly, the risk is comparable to type 2 diabetes,” added Dr. Nurmohamed, a rheumatologist at the...

AP Medical Writer The largest study ever of multivitamin use in older women found the pills did nothing to prevent common cancers or heart disease. The eight-year study in 161,808 postmenopausal women echoes recent disappointing vitamin studies in men. Millions of Americans spend billions of dollars on vitamins to boost their health. Research has focused on cancer and heart disease in particular because of evidence that diets full of vitamin-rich foods may protect against those illnesses. But that evidence doesn't necessarily mean pills are a good substitute...

Study: Stem Cells Used To Fix Your Broken Heart It's Called The Marvel Study The Largest Clinical Trial Investigating Adult Stem Cells To Treat Congestive Heart Failure For More Info, Call Jim Moran Heart & Vascular Center At (954) 229-8400 MIAMI (CBS4) ― Doctors are discovering a new way to fix your broken heart. A study is underway in South Florida that could revolutionize the way heart attack patients help their damaged hearts by using their own stem cells. It's called The Marvel Study and under the direction of Dr. Alan Neiderman with the Jim Moran Heart & Vascular Research...