Others' Prayers Don't Help in Coronary Artery Surgery according to a multicenter study led by a Harvard group: "The common plea to 'pray for me' doesn't seem to matter in the outcomes of patients having coronary artery bypass surgery according to a multicenter study led by a Harvard group(CABG), according to a multicenter study led by a Harvard group. In a six-hospital randomized study of the clinical effects having others pray for them, there was no benefit. 'Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG,' found Herbert Benson, M.D., of the Mind/Body Institute of Harvard's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center here, and colleagues.

In fact, the complication rate was significantly higher for the 352 of 601 patients (59%) who were confident that others were praying for them, compared with the 315 of 604 (52%) of patients uncertain of such prayers (RR 1.14, 95% CI 1.02-1.28) but who received them, Dr. Benson and colleagues reported in the April 4 issue of the American Heart Journal. "

Stroke Warning Goes Unheeded By Nearly Half of Patients - CME Teaching Brief - MedPage Today: "Although a transient ischemic attack is a major harbinger of stroke, nearly half who have a TIA delay seeking medical help, even when they recognize the symptoms.

'Despite the high risk of stroke after TIA, many patients delay seeking medical attention, irrespective of correct recognition of symptoms,' the investigators wrote. 'However, the impact of such delays is counterbalanced to some extent by TIA patients at higher predicted risk of stroke acting more urgently.'"

Variables Explaining Functional Recovery Following Motor Stroke- "From Journal of Neuroscience Nursing"

Cardiologists only docs getting heart exams right/Stanford University in California: "Cardiologists are better than medical students, residents, and other practicing physicians at performing a bedside heart examination and in accurately identifying abnormal heart sounds, according to the findings of two studies reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine."

Eat Right for Your Body Shape...READ MORE
Some are blessed with bigger busts and slender legs while others are born with curvaceous hips and smaller waists. They are both shapes of beauty in their own way. The difference in these shapes not only makes up what you look like on the outside, but it plays a vital role in what is happening on the inside as well.

Underneath every woman's wardrobe is a fruit of health waiting to be discovered. Dr. Marie Savard, Author of Apples & Pears, The Body Weight Solution for Weight Loss and Wellness, has made it her mission to show you how to find it and what you can do to stay healthy. The book focuses on one essential health factor that has been dangerously overlooked throughout the years -- body shape.

After a first stroke, patients are nearly twice as likely to die from heart disease than from another stroke, according to a study published in the medical journal Neurology. However, in the long-term, they are more likely to have another non-fatal stroke than to have a cardiac event.

"Few population-based studies with long-term follow-up have compared risk of recurrent stroke and cardiac events after first ischemic stroke," Dr. M. S. V. Elkind and colleagues from Columbia University, New York, write. "The relative risk of these two outcomes may inform treatment decisions."

The New England Journal of Medicine: "Just when we thought we understood everything about low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and its relationship to cardiovascular risk, along comes a discovery that reveals a new control mechanism and suggests a strategy for the prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. "

Read More: "There are many risk factors for heart disease and now doctors at Duke want to add to that list.

Researchers have found that women who have complications during pregnancy are at an increased risk for developing heart disease."

Read More: "What happened? A new study has found that treating above-normal blood pressure (prehypertension) with medication and lifestyle changes can reduce the risk of eventually developing high blood pressure (hypertension).
Normal blood pressure is below 120/80 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg). Higher readings are classified as:

Prehypertension 120/80 to 139/89
Stage 1 hypertension 140/90 to 159/99
Stage 2 hypertension 160/100 or higher

As your blood pressure rises, so does your risk of cardiovascular disease."

A beaming Jane Robelot on the set of The Early Show Thursday, three weeks to the day after she had robotic heart surgery (CBS/The Early Show)
- CBS News....MORE

MOREStroke patients who partake in a therapeutic exercise program may experience a reduction in depressive symptoms, according to the results of a study published the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Along with physical disability, depression is common in stroke patients, Dr. Sue-Min Lai, of the University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, and colleagues point out. Previous studies have found that physical exercise can reduce symptoms in depressed patients, but the effect of exercise on stroke patients is unknown.

MORE: "Heart attack patients who have a certain pattern on an electrocardiogram significantly reduced their risk of death and having another heart attack at 30 days with the medication fondaparinux, without an increased risk of bleeding and strokes, according to a study that will appear in the April 5 issue of JAMA. The study is being released early online to coincide with its presentation at the American College of Cardiology annual conference."

Full Story | Reuters.com: "njecting bone marrow cells into heart muscle has for the first time been shown to increase the ability of patients with severe heart disease to exercise and more effectively pump blood"

Full Story: "Heart attack patients treated with anti-thrombosis drugs instead of the blood-thinner heparin are less likely to die or have another heart attack, researchers told a meeting of cardiologists on Tuesday.'This is a better blood-thinning strategy for patients who have a heart attack,' said Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Elliott Antman, lead investigator of the trial comparing the drug Lovenox to heparin."

READ MORE | Reuters.com

Pacemakers are getting smarter and handier all the time. They can even serve as diagnostic tools to help physicians

CLICK HERE

MORE: "An attorney for Merck & Co. insisted at the start of another Vioxx trial that the company adequately investigated the drug's safety and asserted it was heart disease and other ailments, not Vioxx, that led to two former users' heart attacks."

[MORE] U.S. Pharmacist

Stroke is often preventable, but first you need to know if you're at risk. Take this quiz to find outREAD MORE

READ MORE: "The survey indicates that 79 percent of Avondale adults who were surveyed are overweight or obese, indicating that a substantial portion of the population is at an increased risk for the development of heart disease.

Nearly 26 percent of Avondale adults had been previously diagnosed with high blood pressure by a physician, and the TGen study found that an additional 62 percent of the community had abnormally high blood pressure readings.

In addition to obesity, diabetes is a big risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Among the individuals surveyed, more than 14 percent were currently being treated for type 2 diabetes. An additional 25 percent of study participants had glucose levels normally seen in diabetes or in individuals at high-risk of developing the disease."

READ MORE: "For neurons, overexcitement is deadly. To avoid this, brain cells must sop up unneeded neurotransmitters from the synapse through membrane-bound transporters. If these transporters fail, neurons and other brain cells get excited to death-- a phenomenon that may contribute to brain damage during stroke and Alzheimer's disease.

Indeed, brain deterioration after stroke is associated with elevated levels of glutamate -- the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the mammalian central nervous system (CNS) -- in the plasma and cerebral spinal fluid. One possible explanation for this glutamate build-up, reported online on March 6th in The Journal of Experimental Medicine, is a mutation in the gene encoding the glutamate transporter protein EAAT2.

This mutation --- a single nucleotide change in the promoter region of the EAAT2 gene -- was equally prevalent in healthy individuals and stroke patients. But among stroke patients, those with the mutated allele had higher plasma levels of glutamate and were more likely to suffer from post-stroke neurological problems than those with the normal allele.

The mutation changed a binding site for the activating transcription factor AP-2 into a binding site for the repressor GCF2 -- a swap that inhibited promoter activity in transfected rat brain cells. Whether the mutant promoter decreases EAAT2 expression in the human brain, as would be predicted, remains to be tested."

READ MORE: "If a stroke patient has an impaired arm, constraining the working arm daily during a two-week rehabilitation program can significantly improve use of the contralateral arm.

Patients randomized to constraint-induced movement therapy 'showed large to very large' improvements in functional use of the affected arm compared with patients who received traditional rehabilitation therapy (P<0.0001), according to results reported in the April issue of Stroke, Journal of the American Heart Association.

New Route To Stroke Therapy Could Protect Vulnerable Neurons..[MORE]: "In the neurological train wreck that is stroke, researchers have traced the major cause of the death of brain cells due to artery blockage or bleeding in the brain. They know that the resulting oxygen loss, or ischemia, unleashes a cascade of the brain chemical glutamate, which in turn triggers receptors on the surface of brain cells to snap open, allowing a lethal flood of calcium into the cells. Such receptors are pore-like proteins on the neuronal surface.

However, clinical trials of drugs to keep these receptors closed to calcium have largely failed, in large part because they disrupt normal function of the channels in otherwise unaffected brain areas.

Now, however, researchers have discovered the distinct molecular malfunction that renders some neurons particularly vulnerable to stroke damage. Those vulnerable are neurons are in the hippocampus, the brain region central to learning and memory. The researchers' findings, they say, could lead to drugs targeted to correct this specific malfunction, without compromising other brain cells........."

READ MORE: " Higher rates of infection among women undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery may explain why women have higher risk of death than men following the procedure, according to a study in the February 27 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

More than half a million coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgeries are performed in the United States every year, making it one of the most common surgical procedures in the country, according to background information in the article.

Physicians know that women who undergo the procedure are more likely to die during hospitalization than men. This may be because of differences in artery size or the higher rate of other diseases and conditions among women, though these explanations remain controversial."

Read More | Reuters.co.uk: "Depression is one of the most common health disorders in the US, and heart disease is a leading cause of death. 'Although they can and do occur separately, research shows that the two conditions are often connected,' health experts write in the February issue of the Mayo Clinic Women's HealthSource. Previous studies have shown that depression is more common among people with heart disease than among those without. Researchers found that one in three heart attack survivors experience depression, compared to about one in 20 adults in the general population. Depression has also been shown to be a precursor to heart disease. "