Heart
Heart disease risk tied to mom’s number of births
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A woman’s risk of heart disease and stroke in middle-age and beyond may be associated with the number of children she gives birth to, a large study of Swedish women hints.
“Women having two births had the lowest risk of future cardiovascular disease,” Dr. Erik Ingelsson, at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, noted in an email to Reuters Health, while women having five or more births had the highest risk.
Prior studies looking at ties between number of births and women’s later risk of heart disease have yielded conflicting results. Most of these studies were small. Ingelsson and his colleagues looked for an association between number of births and heart disease risk in 1.3 million Swedish women after they turned 50.
Menopausal changes increase heart disease risk
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A woman’s risk of heart disease intensifies drastically around the time of menopause, which for most women is around 50 years, research says.
Experts explain that understanding risk factors is an important first step, and reassure women that there are ways to lower the risk.
“Many women younger than 50 have not yet gone through menopause and still have high levels of the female hormone estrogen in their blood, which is thought to help protect the heart,” said Vera Rigolin, associate director of the Centre for Women’s Cardiovascular Health at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
Mayo Clinic Reports its First Lung Transplantation by Donation After Cardiac Death
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Lung transplantation is a well-known therapy for patients with end-stage lung disease, but, as with other patients waiting for organs for transplantation, there are more recipients waiting than donors available. A potential solution for patients with end-stage lung disease is donation after cardiac death (DCD). Mayo Clinic reports its - and Minnesota’s - first lung transplantation from DCD in the February issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
VIDEO ALERT: Additional audio and video resources including excerpts from an interview with Dr. Cassivi describing the research are available on the Mayo Clinic News Blog. Please see the end of the release for details.
While brain death has become the most widely used criteria for organ donation over the past few decades, the earliest organ donations were from deceased donors following cardiac death, says Stephen Cassivi, M.D., Mayo Clinic thoracic surgeon and lead study author.
Childhood obesity increases heart disease risk later in life
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Obesity alone can increase the risk of future heart disease and stroke in kids, as young as seven years of age, according to a new study.
The study said that the danger persists even in the absence of other cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure.
“This new study demonstrates that the unhealthy consequences of excess body fat start very early. Our study shows that obesity alone is linked to certain abnormalities in the blood that can predispose individuals to developing cardiovascular disease early in adulthood,” said Dr. Nelly Mauras, of Nemours Children’’s Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida and senior author of the study.
Childhood Obesity Raises Risk Of Future Heart Disease
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Jacksonville, FL, United States (AHN) - Being overweight as a child may be associated with a future of heart disease and stroke as an adult, according to a new study.
Researchers with the Nemours Children’s Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla. said in a statement that by early as 7 years old, being obese may raise a child’s risk of heart health problems further down the road.
The researchers say the results show a need for more aggressive interventions for weight control in obese children, even before the onset of what they call “metabolic syndrome.”
Higher stroke, heart disease risks for A-bomb survivors
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A study of atomic bomb survivors in Japan conducted over 53 years has found that they appear to suffer a far higher risk of heart disease and stroke because of their exposure to radiation.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, involved 86,611 survivors from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, which forced Japan into surrendering to the Allied Powers and officially ending World War II.
Each person was exposed to an absorbed radiation dose of between 0 and 4 Gy (Gray) at the time of the bombings.
In Early Heart Development, Genes Work in Tandem
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Studying genes that regulate early heart development in animals, scientists have solved a puzzle about one gene’s role, finding that it acts in concert with a related gene. Their finding contributes to understanding how the earliest stages of heart development may go awry, resulting in congenital heart defects in humans.
Peter J. Gruber, M.D., Ph.D., a cardiothoracic surgeon at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, led a study published this week in the Jan. 15 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Occurring in approximately 1 in 200 children, congenital heart defects represent the most common human birth defect.
“We uncovered a role for the Gata5 gene, a role that has been unappreciated in vertebrate cardiac development,” said Gruber. “Gata5 is a gene that is essential to heart development in other animals, such as frogs and zebrafish, but contrary to expectations, deleting this gene seemed to have no effect on the hearts of mammals. We found, however, that in mice, this gene cooperates closely with other genes to affect heart development. It may work similarly in humans.”
Madoff being treated for hypertension: official
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Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff is being treated for high blood pressure and dizziness, and was not hurt by another prisoner, a U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman said on Thursday.
“Bernie Madoff was not assaulted. He’s being treated at the (Butner) federal medical center for dizziness and hypertension,” said Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley.
A Raleigh, North Carolina television station reported on its website that Madoff was hospitalized late last week and treated for facial fractures, broken ribs and a collapsed lung. Citing unidentified sources, the station reported that Madoff’s injuries were consistent with an assault.
Child cancer survivors have higher heart risk
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Children and young people who survive cancer have a significantly higher risk of developing heart disease as young adults because of the cancer treatment they received, researchers said Wednesday.
A study by doctors from the United States found that young adult survivors of childhood cancer are at risk of a range of cardiac problems such as heart failure, heart attacks, or heart disease and the risks continued up to 30 years after treatment.
“Young adults who survive childhood or adolescent cancer are clearly at risk for early cardiac morbidity and mortality not typically recognized within this age group,” said Daniel Mulrooney from the University of Minnesota, who led the study.
ED Drug Improves Heart’s Pumping Action in Young Patients with Single-Ventricle Disease
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Heart function significantly improved in children and young adults with single-ventricle congenital heart disease who have had the Fontan operation following treatment with sildenafil, a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction and pulmonary hypertension, say researchers from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Single-ventricle defects are a collection of cardiac malformations that impair the heart’s ability to pump blood. Examples include tricuspid atresia, pulmonary atresia/intact ventricular septum and hypoplastic left heart syndrome.
The Fontan operation is a procedure that redirects systemic venous blood directly to the pulmonary arteries, bypassing the heart. It is the third surgery in a staged palliation for single-ventricle heart defects.
Overexpression of Sodium/Calcium Exchanger Protein Alone did not Cause Heart Failure
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Researchers from the Center for Translational Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University have found that the overexpression of a sodium/calcium exchanger, without changes in other ion transport pathways commonly observed in heart failure, does not by itself lead to contraction abnormalities in the heart. They presented the data from the study at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Orlando, Fla.
Led by Joseph Cheung, M.D., Ph.D., Capizzi Professor of Medicine and director of the division of Nephrology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, the research team engineered a novel mouse model in which the expression of the sodium/calcium exchanger protein (NCX1) could be turned on and off, by withholding doxycycline from the mouse feed.
NCX1 normally removes calcium from the heart. Under some conditions, NCX1 can also add calcium to the heart. According to Dr. Cheung, calcium controls the strength of the heartbeat.
‘Scaffolding’ Protein Changes in Heart Strengthen Link Between Alzheimer’s Disease
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A team of U.S., Canadian and Italian scientists led by researchers at Johns Hopkins report evidence from studies in animals and humans supporting a link between Alzheimer’s disease and chronic heart failure, two of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States.
The international team of biochemists and cardiologists say they have identified three changes in the chemical make-up of a key structural protein, called desmin, in heart muscle cells in dogs. The changes led to the formation of debris-like protein clusters, or amyloid-like oligomers containing desmin, in heart muscle, similar to the amyloid plaques seen in the brain tissue of Alzheimer’s patients. The protein alterations, which were reversed by surgically repairing the heart, occurred at the onset of heart failure. Further experiments by the Hopkins scientists found the same chemical modifications to desmin in the heart muscle in four people already diagnosed with the disease.
Researchers develop innovative imaging system to study sudden cardiac arrest
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A research team at Vanderbilt University has developed an innovative optical system to simultaneously image electrical activity and metabolic properties in the same region of a heart, to study the complex mechanisms that lead to sudden cardiac arrest. Tested in animal models, the system could dramatically advance scientists’ understanding of the relationship between metabolic disorders and heart rhythm disturbances in humans that can lead to cardiac arrest and death, and provide a platform for testing new treatments to prevent or stop potentially fatal irregular heartbeats, known as arrhythmias.
The research is supported in part by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health.
The design and use of the dual camera system is described in the Nov.1 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine. Additional support for the project has also been provided by the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education (VIIBRE), the American Heart Association, and the Simons Center for Systems Biology at the Institute for Advanced Study.
Patient First in North Texas to Receive Newest-generation Heart Failure Device
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UT Southwestern Medical Center patient Michael LeBlanc, 40, is the first in North Texas to receive the newest generation of a mechanical device designed to improve heart function. It will be his lifeline while he awaits a heart transplant.
Called a left-ventricular assist device (LVAD), its purpose is to help a patient’s weakened heart pump blood throughout the body. For Mr. LeBlanc, it will help his ailing heart continue to pump until the Irving resident receives a new heart. UT Southwestern is the only medical facility in North Texas implanting the HeartWare Ventricular Assist System as part of a national clinical trial testing the effectiveness of the device.
The HeartWare Ventricular Assist System is a little smaller than a hockey puck and two and half times smaller than the earliest versions of LVADs.
Heart attacks up for women, but survival is too
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The good news: Younger women’s survival after heart attack has improved substantially over the past decade, according to a new report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
The not-so-good news: Women younger than 55 are still less likely to survive a heart attack than their male counterparts, Dr. Viola Vaccarino of Emory University in Atlanta and her colleagues found. And another study in the same journal found heart attacks are becoming more common among women 35 to 54 years old.
Vaccarino and her team first reported a major gender difference in heart attack survival in people under 60 in 1999, a finding other investigators have since confirmed. To investigate whether things might have gotten better, they looked at a registry of more than 900,000 people hospitalized for a heart attack from 1994 to 2006.
