A blood test for patients with coronary heart disease could help predict their risk for subsequent cardiovascular events or death, according to a study in the Jan_10 issue of JAMA.
A simple blood test for the protein NT-proBNP accurately predicts the risk of heart attack, heart failure, stroke and death in patients with known cardiovascular disease, according to a study led by a researcher at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.
UCLA researchers report that for patients hospitalized with acute heart failure, a higher body mass index (BMI) was associated with a substantially lower in-hospital mortality rate. The finding offers more insight into an observed phenomenon in chronic heart failure called the “obesity paradox.”
Academic researchers reported that all five standard hospital-based performance measures used to gauge quality of care for hospitalized heart failure patients may not be the best benchmarks, since none were significant predictors of patient mortality during the critical 60 to 90 days immediately following hospital discharge.
Four of five hospital performance measures for heart failure do not appear to accurately reflect the quality of care provided, according to a study in the January 3 issue of JAMA.
Use of the drug pexelizumab immediately before and for 24 hours after stent placement or angioplasty for certain heart attack patients did not have any significant treatment effect compared to placebo, according to a study in the January 3 issue of JAMA. The medication had shown promise in preliminary studies.
Researchers reported that all five standard hospital-based performance measures used to gauge quality-of-care for hospitalized heart-failure patients may not be the best benchmarks since none were significant predictors of patient mortality during the critical first 60 to 90 days immediately following hospital discharge.
Drugs known as beta blockers help reduce the heart’s workload during heart failure via their action on beta-adrenergic receptors in cardiac cells. However, doctors remain puzzled by the variable responses to beta blockers among patients. Researchers now show that the key to this variation lies in a single amino acid change in the beta1-adrenergic receptor, that may differ from person to person, which alters the receptor’s conformation and the receptor’s response to certain beta blockers.
Heart disease hits Americans who live in southern states harder than residents of other regions of the country, according to the latest annual survey of cardiovascular disease in the United States.
Recent studies show promise for significantly reducing vascular aging by inactivating TNF?, which has been linked to blood vessel dysfunction and cell death. The related report by Csiszar et al., “Vasculoprotective effects of anti-TNF? treatment in aging,” appears in the January issue of The American Journal of Pathology.