heart attack

Eating Chocolate Cuts Heart Attack And Stroke Risk

Posted by

0

Eating Chocolate Cuts Heart Attack And Stroke Risk But Scientists Don’t Know How, British Medical Journal Reveals

 

Eating up to 100 g of chocolate every day is linked to lowered heart disease and stroke risk, finds research published online in the journal Heart.

There doesn’t seem to be any evidence for cutting out chocolate to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease, conclude the researchers.

They base their findings on almost 21,000 adults taking part in the EPIC-Norfolk study, which is tracking the impact of diet on the long term health of 25,000 men and women in Norfolk, England, using food frequency and lifestyle questionnaires.

The researchers also carried out a systematic review of the available international published evidence on the links between chocolate and cardiovascular disease, involving almost 158,000 people–including the EPIC study participants.

 

Full Story

Short people’s ‘DNA linked to increased heart risk’

Posted by

0

The study, of nearly 200,000 people, found sections of DNA that control both height and heart health.

The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed every extra 2.5in (6.4cm) cut coronary disease incidence by 13.5%

The British Heart Foundation said short people should not be unduly worried and everyone needed a healthy lifestyle.

Coronary heart disease, which includes heart attacks and heart failure, is the leading cause of death in the UK.

More than 73,000 people die from the disease each year.

‘Small’ risk

The idea that height plays a role in heart health was first proposed more than 50 years ago, but researchers did not know why.

Some thought the relationship was a consequence of other factors, such as poor childhood nutrition stunting height and also affecting the heart.

But the study at the University of Leicester suggests the answer lies deeper – inside our DNA.

They analysed 180 genes that have a known link to height………

 

Full Story

A protein may be linked to heart attacks

Posted by

0

A protein may be linked to heart attacks

A team of researchers at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, led by Dr. Alexandre Stewart, have uncovered an intriguing link between heart attacks and a protein that is of great interest to drug companies for its impact on cholesterol.

The team found that levels of the protein PCSK9 were elevated in the blood of patients having an acute heart attack, but not in those who never had a heart attack or who had recovered from one previously. The results were replicated in two separate groups of patients, all of whom have coronary artery disease but were not taking a cholesterol-lowering statin drug.

Published in the journal PLOS One, the findings point to an important question: “Are PCSK9 levels elevated shortly before you get a heart attack?” asks Dr. Stewart, principal investigator in the Ruddy Canadian Cardiovascular Genetics Centre at the Ottawa Heart Institute. “If levels only go up after, that would suggest a side effect of the heart attack. But if they go up before, that suggests it might trigger the event, or make it worse.”

The Heart Institute researchers first identified the PCSK9 link to heart attacks using blood samples from patients enrolled in the Ottawa Heart Genomics Study. They then confirmed these results in a group of patients from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Again, they found elevated PCSK9 levels in samples taken from patients at the time of acute heart attack, but not in samples taken from patients with a history of heart attack or from those with coronary artery disease who never had a heart attack.

 

Read full article at MNT

Polypill helps heart attack survivors take their meds, potentially saving lives

Posted by

0

king a polypill instead of a cocktail of tablets increases the chances that heart attack survivors will keep to their medication regime, which may prevent more patients having further heart attacks. This was the conclusion of a US-led international study presented at a meeting this week.
Pills
A clinical trial reveals that patients are more likely to take their heart attack prevention medication as a polypill than as three separate pills.

Lead investigator Dr. Valentin Fuster, director of Mount Sinai Heart Hospital, New York, NY, presented the findings of the FOCUS study at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) 2014 Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday.

Read full story at MNT

He notes that despite medical advances in tackling cardiovascular disease, rates in the population have steadily increased, to the point where it is the number one killer worldwide.