High Blood Pressure News and Research

Latest High Blood Pressure News and Research

Reducing kids' salt intake may lower soft drink consumption

Children who eat less salt drink fewer sugar-sweetened soft drinks and may significantly lower their risks for obesity, elevated blood pressure and later-in-life heart attack and stroke, researchers reported in the print and online issue of Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association.

21 Feb 2008

Obesity linked to stroke increase among middle-aged women

Middle-aged women's waists aren't the only thing that increased in the last decade. So did their chance of stroke.

21 Feb 2008

Memory loss and thinking problems are becoming less common among older Americans

A new nationally representative study shows a downward trend in the rate of "cognitive impairment" - the umbrella term for everything from significant memory loss to dementia and Alzheimer's disease - among people aged 70 and older.

21 Feb 2008

Drinking milk may help women lower risk for hypertension

Women who drank more fat free milk and had higher intakes of calcium and vitamin D from foods, and not supplements, tended to have a lower risk for developing hypertension or high blood pressure, according to a new study published in the American Heart Association journal, Hypertension.

21 Feb 2008

Pre-eclampsia linked to herpes virus

Australian researchers have discovered a viral link which they believe may help explain high blood pressure during pregnancy (pre-eclampsia) and pre-term birth.

18 Feb 2008

Obese teens need more help and U.S. expert says surgical solutions should not be dismissed

A recent report which has found Victorian hospitals are having to treat hundreds of obese children each year, has highlighted the seriousness of the obesity epidemic and how ill equipped and under-resourced services treating childhood obesity are.

18 Feb 2008

Many Aussies would take a test for dementia

According to a new report, by the year 2050 as many as 730,000 Australians will be suffering from some form of dementia and almost three quarters of Australians say if such a test existed to show if they were going to develop some form of dementia, they would take it.

18 Feb 2008

Living under a flight path can raise your blood pressure

An international study is suggesting that night-time noise from aircraft or traffic raises blood pressure even while people are asleep.

13 Feb 2008

Get fit because it's never too late!

According to the latest research it's never too late to get fit. Researchers in the United States say the benefits of a healthy, active lifestyle which includes regular exercise last well into old age.

13 Feb 2008

One red wine good, two bad!, says study

One drink of either red wine or alcohol slightly benefits the heart and blood vessels, but the positive effects on specific biological markers disappear with two drinks, say researchers at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre of the Toronto General Hospital.

13 Feb 2008

Discovery of 'overdrive' protein could broaden drug design options

New research by scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows for the first time that an important family of proteins known to function at the cell surface also functions at a site within the cell.

13 Feb 2008

Night-time noise from aircraft or traffic can increase a person's blood pressure

Scientists from Imperial College London and other European institutions monitored 140 sleeping volunteers in their homes near London Heathrow and three other major European airports.

13 Feb 2008

Factors associated with exceptionally long life

A healthy lifestyle during the early elderly years—including weight management, exercising regularly and not smoking—may be associated with a greater probability of living to age 90 in men, as well as good health and physical function, according to a report in the February 11 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

12 Feb 2008

Most hypertension patients ignore recommended diet

A relatively small proportion of individuals with hypertension (high blood pressure) eat diets that align with government guidelines for controlling the disease, according to a report in the February 11 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

12 Feb 2008

Hypertension worsening in all states for women; stagnates for men

Uncontrolled hypertension rates in men and women vary across the country, but all states - especially in the south and including the nation's capital - should boost blood pressure control efforts, researchers report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

12 Feb 2008

Hostility plus depression elevates risk for heart disease

Researchers led by Jesse Stewart, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, report that hostility and depression appear to act together in a complex way to elevate inflammatory proteins in the human body, possibly putting hostility plus depression on the list of risk factors for heart disease along with high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, and smoking.

12 Feb 2008

Study explains preeclampsia develops

In a study of pregnant women, those with pregnancy-induced high blood pressure were found to have higher levels of a peptide that raises blood pressure in the pieces of tissue linking mother and fetus, according to researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

11 Feb 2008

Calcium channel blockers cut risk of Parkinson's disease

People taking a widely used group of drugs known as calcium channel blockers to treat high blood pressure also appear to be cutting their risk of Parkinson's disease, according to a study published in the February 6, 2008, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

7 Feb 2008

The obesity epidemic - does the evidence stack up?

Last week, the UK health secretary declared that we are in a grip of an obesity epidemic, but does the evidence stack up? Researchers in this week's BMJ debate the issue.

5 Feb 2008