CLICK HERE TO READ MORE: "Healthier eating habits could make a big difference in the epidemic of high blood pressure in the U.S., according to a report from the American Heart Association.

Over the past 10 years, studies have bolstered evidence that diets rich in fruits and vegetables and low in sodium can lower a person's blood pressure, the AHA concludes in a scientific statement published in its journal Hypertension."

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE: Taking a pill containing melatonin, a natural hormone that regulates sleep, at bedtime may enhance the drop in blood pressure that occurs at night, Italian investigators report, thereby protecting the heart from damage.

The normal decline in blood pressure at night is related to the rise of melatonin levels in the body, Dr. Angelo Cagnacci, from Policlinico di Modena, and colleagues note. Therefore, treatment with melatonin might be expected to lower blood pressure further.

READ MORE | AP NewsMagnetic tracking of immune cells could one day offer a better way to monitor organ transplants for rejection, researchers report.

A research team led by Chien Ho at Carnegie Mellon University found that they could tag immune cells with iron oxide and then track the cells using magnetic resonance imaging. Accumulation of immune cells in a transplanted organ can indicate rejection.

Ho and colleagues studied mice that had been given heart transplants. Their findings are reported in Tuesday's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Currently, heart transplant patients are given drugs to suppress their immune systems to prevent rejecting the new organ.

In addition, frequent heart biopsies are done in which a catheter is threaded into the heart to remove a piece of tissue to be examined for signs of rejection. These procedures are uncomfortable and costly. In addition, Ho said, they may miss problems because they check only a sample of the heart rather than the whole organ.

Ho's procedure involved immune cells called macrophages, which ingest foreign particles in the body. They tagged these cells with minute iron oxide particles and then injected them into mice that had received a heart transplant three days earlier.

Using MRI they were able to track the immune cells and observe the rejection process, Ho reported, noting that rejection progressed from the outside the heart to the inside.

Ho's team is now working with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine on repeating the work in larger a

READ MORE: "Vitamin E may not prevent heart trouble as much as we thought, according to an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Doctors studied nearly 10,000 people over the age of 50 with heart trouble or diabetes. They gave some folks a high dose of Vitamin E -- 400 international units a day -- and some a placebo.

Then they monitored the two groups for just about any kind of trouble that could bother their blood vessels, like angina, heart attack, strokes or blood clots.

Unfortunately, Vitamin E had absolutely no impact on how people did. It did not help at all over a 5-year period."

READ MORE - New York Times: "A drug used worldwide to reduce bleeding during heart surgery can increase the risk of kidney failure, heart attacks and strokes and should be abandoned, doctors are reporting today. They say other medicines are safer and cheaper, and should be used instead.

The drug, aprotinin, is sold under the brand name Trasylol and made by Bayer. The company disputed the new findings."

CLICK TO READ MOREThe symptoms of a heart attack may be so subtle that many patients don't recognize them.
Most Americans (85%) are aware of the ominous interpretation of chest pain, shows a national survey reported here, but only about a third recognize discomfort in the neck (36%), back (32%), and jaw (30%) as common signs of an MI. And only 23% are aware that nausea could also be a sign.

On top of that, only 40% of the respondents say they would seek medical attention if they had any of these symptoms, whereas 59% said they would wait to see if the symptoms subsided. Fourteen percent said they would call 911 right away.
Not knowing the more subtle signs of a heart attack could cost patients time that might help save their lives, indicated authors of the survey, conducted by Harris Interactive and sponsored by PDL BioPharma, a medical research company.

READ MORE: National Institutes of Health : "The results of a new study suggest that the use of drugs that prevent blood clotting, such as aspirin, does not raise the risk of repeat bleeding in patients who've have bleeding in the brain, a problem called intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH).
However, until more evidence becomes available, anticlotting treatment should be considered only in selected ICH survivors who have a high risk of clotting problems, the researchers advise.
The study included 207 patients with ICH who had been treated at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston between 1994 and 2004 and interviewed three and six months after they had an ICH and every six months thereafter.
Dr. E. E. Smith and colleagues report in the medical journal Neurology that 46 of the subjects began using aspirin, or in one case a similar drug called clopidogrel, during follow-up. Reasons for using these drugs included heart disease and stroke-related problems."

READ MORE
- CME Teaching Brief - MedPage Today: "A drink or two a day may decrease the risk of ischemic stroke, researchers here said, but they aren't prescribing drinking for cerebrovascular health.

Moderate drinkers, defined as those who consumed at least one drink per month but no more than two per day, had a 33% reduced risk of ischemic stroke compared with individuals who didn't drink, said Mitchell S.V. Elkind, M.D., of the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons."

Tulane University ....READ MORE: "Hardening of the arteries in the legs is strongly associated with biological markers of inflammation, which may be a warning sign of heart trouble, say Tulane University epidemiologists. In a recently published article, the researchers suggest that an inexpensive test for inflammation may be a good start to identifying warning signs of heart trouble.
Inflammation occurs when the body responds in an effort to repair damaged tissue, including the scarring and hardening of arteries over time.
'Our data show that a high leukocyte (an inflammation marker) count was moderately predictive of peripheral arterial disease,' says lead author Rachel Wildman, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Leukocytes are commonly known as white blood cells. 'Leukocyte count can be assessed using an inexpensive routine test. Our data call for future research to examine whether this test may be good enough for screening purposes.'
Wildman and colleagues analyzed data for three inflammation markers: c-reactive protein, fibrinogen and leukocyte count in 4,787 people over age 40 who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999 - 2002. The researchers used that data and ankle and arm blood pressure measures to study the relationship between inflammation markers and peripheral arterial disease, known as PAD. PAD can result in narrower or blocked arteries.
Results from the study show that adults with the highest levels of inflammation markers were twice as likely to have peripheral arterial disease than those with low levels of inflammation. Inflammation was most strongly associated with PAD in non-Hispanic blacks, current smokers and middle-aged patients.
The research is published in the December issue of the American Journal of Cardiology.
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Practice, repetition, and a commitment to primary angioplasty can shave life-saving minutes off the time to coronary revascularization for patients with an ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI).


Patients who underwent angioplasty at hospitals specializing in percutaneous revascularization had significantly shorter door-to-balloon times (P<0.001) and a significantly lower risk of in-hospital mortality (P=0.006) than patients treated at hospitals that treat heart attacks with angioplasty or thrombolytics.


Those findings, published in the Jan. 17 issue of Circulation, Journal of the American Heart AssociationCLICK TO READ MORE

"Even in Canada where everyone has medical coverage, a "wealth-health gradient" in mortality rates from heart disease exists among different income groups. Now, results of a new study suggest that older age and more extensive cardiovascular risk factors -- and not sub-par treatment -- explain why poor people have higher mortality rates than affluent people after suffering a heart attack.

Patients with the lowest income were twice as likely as those with the highest to die before scheduled follow-up at 30 days, 1 year, and 2 years, the investigators report in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

"Differences in mortality between poorer and more affluent patients were virtually entirely explained by age and differences in cardiovascular risk profile upon hospital presentation," Dr. Alter said.

"While there were disparities between lower and higher income patients in the type of care that we provided," he added, "those factors were not important players in explaining the survival differences."MORE

More: "Eating a very low-calorie yet nutritionally balanced diet is good for your heart. Studying heart function in members of an organization called the Calorie Restriction Society, investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that their hearts functioned like the hearts of much younger people. The researchers report their findings in the Jan. 17 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Ultrasound examinations showed that the hearts of people on caloric restriction appeared more elastic than those of age- and gender-matched control subjects. Their hearts were able to relax between beats in a way similar to the hearts in younger people."

Being overweight or obese in middle age, even if you don't have risk factors such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol, increases the odds that you'll develop heart disease later in life.

And if you're overweight or obese, or have other factors that put you at high risk for heart disease or stroke, chances are you're not getting the treatment you need.

Those are the conclusions of two studies that appear in the Jan. 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.more - Forbes.com

The coronary computed tomography angiogram (CTA) is revolutionizing cardiology by revealing coronary artery blockages within minutes and for about one-tenth of the cost of invasive catheterization.

Studies have shown that early detection of calcium deposits in the arteries can help predict whether a patient is likely to have a heart attack. Usually a patient arriving in the emergency room with chest pains is admitted for 24-hour observation and diagnostic testing, including X-rays and scans. Images produced by the coronary CTA illustrate whether there are calcium deposits in the arteries.The Cleveland Clinic..READ MORE

MORE: "Consuming 9% of total calories in vegetable protein sources like tofu, beans, or nuts -- compared with protein from meat and eggs -- may wind up lowering blood pressure.
So suggested an observational study of 4, 680 middle-age men and women from the U.S., England, China, and Japan, conducted by Paul Elliott, M.B., Ph.D., of Imperial College in London and co-investigators with the INTERMAP Cooperative Research Group."

Obesity Today Means Fatal Heart Disease Tomorrow - CME Teaching Brief - MedPage Today: "People who are obese in middle age are far more likely to be hospitalized and to die of diabetes and heart disease in old age, even if they are currently free of cardiovascular-disease risk factors.

Researchers here who kept tabs on more than 17,000 men and women -- some for nearly 40 years -- found that those who were obese in middle age had twice to quadruple the risk of being hospitalized for coronary heart disease in old age than their normal-weight peers, according to a report in the Jan. 11 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association."

"...The fact that Clark recovered from a stroke, can communicate and go on network television should have been acclaimed as a stunning achievement -- because that's what it was. Being able to communicate was a big deal and Clark, knowing he wasn't perfect, was courageous to make the effort when he could have sat home eating popcorn.

We don't see many disabled people on TV, even though there are more than 34 million U.S. adults limited in activity due to a chronic health condition. We hardly ever see a grandpa or grandma anymore, and it's been a long time since we had a character like Ironsides solve crimes while in a wheelchair...."United Press International - READ MORE

Early aggressive intervention for heart failure, with traditional surgery or catheter-based percutaneous interventions, may halve the risk of mortality, according to investigators here.


For a select group of patients treated at the Cleveland Clinic the three-year mortality rate for heart failure patients who had early interventions was 15% versus 35% among patients who underwent conservative medical management (P=0.0004).


Moreover, there was no apparent interaction between survival benefit associated with early cardiac intervention and the amount of ischemic and hibernating tissue identified by imaging studies, Michael S. Lauer, M.D., of Case Western Reserve colleagues reported in the Jan. 3 issue of Circulation, Journal of the American Heart Association.more

Weeks after a small stroke the blood-thinning treatment given Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to prevent a second clot from reaching his brain may have contributed to the massive cerebral hemorrhage he suffered Wednesday, doctors said.

Yesterday, Sharon spent seven hours undergoing emergency surgery to remove the extra blood from his brain. He is in serious but stable condition, according to Shlomo Mor-Yosef, general director of Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.
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Studies have found health problems, including heart disease and diabetes, can be hereditary. But a new study by Dr. Joanne Murabito and her colleagues at the Framingham Heart Study, an organization in Massachusetts, has found that people with a sibling who has heart disease are at a higher risk factor for the same illness.

"Having a sibling with cardiovascular disease increases your risk for a heart attack by as much as 45 percent compared to people without a sibling with cardiovascular disease," said Dr. Murabito.READ MORE AND WATCH VIDEO

The Scios unit of Johnson & Johnson yesterday added to the questions already clouding its heart failure medication Natrecor, saying the company had failed to tell federal regulators about the deaths of two patients in a clinical trial of the drugMORE - New York Times

High Cholesterol May Lead to High Blood Pressure in MenDepartment of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women’s HospitalMen with elevated levels of “bad” cholesterol may increase their risk of hypertension
by 39 percent, “good” cholesterol appears to protect against high blood pressure

In a Finnish study of 208 patients who suffered a stroke caused by a ruptured blood vessel and bleeding in the brain, regular use of moderate doses of aspirin preceding the stroke predicted a high risk of death in the first 3 months.
"We believe that the untoward effect of aspirin use on short-term outcome was attributable to early enlargement of (brain bleeds) in aspirin-users," Dr. Pertti Saloheimo from Oulu University Hospital and colleagues write in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke Reuters.com