Heart Disease News and Research

Latest Heart Disease News and Research

Health care professionals should focus on women's lifetime heart disease risk

The 2007 Guidelines for Preventing Cardiovascular Disease in Women -- published today in a special women's health issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association -- also include new directions for using aspirin, hormone therapy and vitamin and mineral supplements in heart disease and stroke prevention in women.

20 Feb 2007

Low levels of RANTES protein in the blood is a predictor of cardiac death

Researchers at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn have determined that low levels of a protein in the blood is a predictor of cardiac death in patients with coronary artery disease.

20 Feb 2007

Beta-blockers should not be a doctor's first choice for treating high blood pressure

Beta-blocker drugs such as Tenormin, Inderal and Lopressor should not be a doctor's first choice for treating high blood pressure, according to a large new review of studies.

20 Feb 2007

Health professionals would prioritize spending on the young over the old

In prioritizing health care spending, health professionals rank childhood immunization highest and cancer treatment for smokers lowest, according to a new international survey published in PLoS Medicine.

20 Feb 2007

Why is heart shaped like it is?

How does the heart attain its characteristic shape? Shape may be sculpted by cell movement, cell division, or changes in cell size and shape, all of which can be influenced by the local environment. The heart appears as a simple tube early in development; later, the tube walls bulge outward to form the cardiac chambers.

20 Feb 2007

An aspirin a day keeps heart disease away

According to new guidelines released by the American Heart Association, almost all women are at risk of heart disease and doctors should consider prescribing a daily aspirin for them.

20 Feb 2007

Women are more likely than men to show elevated diabetes risk factors

The 'diabetes clock' may start ticking in women years in advance of a medical diagnosis of the disease, new research has shown.

20 Feb 2007

Updated guidelines provide definitive answers on HRT, aspirin, supplements

Health care professionals should focus on women's lifetime heart disease risk, not just short-term risk, according to updated American Heart Association guidelines.

20 Feb 2007

Study underscores importance of cholesterol levels as a risk factor for stroke in women

Healthy women with no history of heart disease or stroke significantly increase their chances of having a stroke if they have high cholesterol, according to a study of more than 27,000 women published in the February 20, 2007, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

20 Feb 2007

Plant-based omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids may have a protective effect on bone health

Normally, most of the omega-3 fatty acids in the diet are plant-derived and come mainly from soybean and canola oil. Other sources are flaxseed, flaxseed oil, walnuts and walnut oil.

19 Feb 2007

C-Reactive protein plays a direct role in the onset of hypertension

We have discovered that C-Reactive Protein (CRP) is not merely a marker of the risk of hypertension, it actually induces hypertension.

19 Feb 2007

Chocolate can give a short-term boost to memory

Eating chocolate could help to sharpen up the mind and give a short-term boost to cognitive skills, a University of Nottingham expert has found.

19 Feb 2007

Cancer is a stem cell issue

There is an urgent reason to study stem cells: stem cells are at the heart of some, if not all, cancers. Mounting evidence implicates a clutch of rogue stem cells brandishing 'epigenetic' marks as the main culprits in cancer. Wiping out tumours for good, some biologists believe, depends on uprooting these wayward stem cells.

19 Feb 2007