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Rapper Coolio has passed away on Wednesday at the age of 59. The musician - famous for his 'Gangsta's Paradise' song on the soundtrack of the Michelle Pfeiffer film, Dangerous Minds - was visiting a friend on Wednesday afternoon when he was found dead according to TMZ. The star's manager, Jarez, shared that Coolio was found unresponsive on a bathroom floor, with the paramedics suspecting he suffered cardiac arrest. The publication reported that the EMTs pronounced Coolio dead on the scene. An official cause of death has not been determined.

Kurt H. Becker, a professor in the Department of Applied Physics and the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and WeiDong Zhu, a research associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, are helping develop a new colloidal gold test strip for cardiac troponin I (cTn-I) detection. The new strip uses microplasma-generated gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and shows much higher detection sensitivity than conventional test strips. The new cTn-I test is based on the specific immune-chemical reactions between antigen and antibody on immunochromatographic test strips using AuNPs. Compared to AuNPs produced by traditional chemical methods, the surfaces of the...

People who suffer heart attacks are at increased risk of having a second and potentially fatal occurrence because of the damage the heart attack does to cardiac muscle tissue. Now scientists at the University of California San Diego have developed a new biomaterial - an injectable hydrogel  - that can repair the damage from heart attacks, and help promote the growth of new heart tissue.   Millions of people around the world suffer heart attacks every year and survive. These traumatic events occur when blood supply to the heart muscles is somehow blocked, robbing them of oxygen and causing them...

New findings from a landmark research study led by Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI) -- a collaborative program between Scripps Health and The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) -- shows a promising new blood test may be useful in helping doctors predict who is at risk for an imminent heart attack. Results of the study, titled "Characterization of Circulating Endothelial Cells in Acute Myocardial Infarction," were published this week in Science Translational Medicine. The study concludes that circulating endothelial cells (CEC) from heart attack patients were abnormally large and misshapen and often appeared with multiple nuclei, which indicates that CECs are...

China Sky One Medical Inc. has received Conformité Européenne (CE) certification for its Myocardial Infarction and Urine Microalbumin Diagnostic Kits, approving them for sale in the European Union member countries. The AMI diagnostic kit can be used by consumers for the early diagnosis of myocardial infarction. It requires the user to place a blood sample on a marker after which a plus or minus sign will appear, indicating whether the user should seek medical attention. It is based on an assay of heart-type fatty acid binding protein (hFABP), which peaks as early as one hour after myocardial damage occurs, much...

Barcelona — Four widely prescribed oral sulfonylurea drugs are associated with significantly increased risk of all-cause mortality compared with metformin in type 2 diabetic patients having a history of MI, according to a comprehensive Danish national cohort study. The study included all Danish adults with a prior MI who started on oral glucose-lowering monotherapy during 1997-2006. The conclusion: Glimepiride, glyburide, glipizide, and tolbutamide were associated with 33%-43% higher mortality risk than was metformin, Dr. Tina Ken Schramm said at the annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology. In contrast, single-agent gliclazide and repaglinide had all-cause mortality risks similar to...

Associated Press New research suggests that more people survive major heart attacks with fewer problems if doctors use a mini-vacuum to clear out an artery blockage instead of pushing it aside to restore blood flow. The Dutch study is the largest to date to show that suctioning out the clot before implanting a stent has big benefits, and could lead to wider use in heart attack treatment. Previous smaller studies of various devices had mixed results. "This study suggests that it is worth doing," said Dr. George Vetrovec, a heart disease expert at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Most heart...

In an ideal world, every heart attack would end like Willard "Ziggy" Hill's. Within 90 minutes of arriving at a small community hospital in North Carolina, he was having a blocked artery reopened at Duke University Medical Center 25 miles away. "It was like being a car in a pit stop at NASCAR," he said. "I thought 'I am in really good hands.'" Two years ago, he might not have been. North Carolina was a bad place to have a heart attack, scoring below national norms of fast care. Now it may be one of the best. The reason is...

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ORLANDO, Fla., March 9 (AP) - Adding Plavix to other anticlotting drugs typically given to heart attack patients saves lives and prevents second heart attacks, two international studies have found. The strategy, specialists said, is the first big advance in care after heart attacks in more than 10 years, since the efficacy of modern clot-busters was shown. The low-cost and simple treatment of using Plavix will have major effects in community hospitals, where most Americans obtain care, the scientists said. It could also help in poorer countries, where heart surgery and the opening of blocked arteries...