Posts Tagged ‘Cardiovascular risk’
Joe Elia • April 18th, 2012
The American Heart Association’s scientific statement on “Periodontal Disease and Atherosclerotic Vascular Disease” is likely to raise hackles among those offering treatments for gum disease as a way to lower risk for heart disease — or even to ameliorate it. The association’s writing committee, after a 4-year review of the evidence, finds no support [...]
Joe Elia • February 13th, 2012
Haplogroups — who knew? Ancient variations in the Y chromosome form what’s known as haplogroups, and haplogroup I is common in Europe, particularly so in northern Europe. Researchers find that “I” is an independent risk factor for coronary artery disease in men, carried as it is on the male-only Y chromosome. Listen in as [...]
Joe Elia • July 8th, 2011
There is a new meta-analysis from the Canadian Medical Association Journal that finds increased risks among smokers trying to quit and taking varenicline (Chantix). Among smokers with stable cardiovascular disease, the number needed to treat to cause an adverse cardiovascular event is about 30, yet the number needed to treat to achieve smoking cessation [...]
Joe Elia • May 14th, 2011
Guidelines warn about using NSAIDs after myocardial infarction, and a 10-year look-back study from Denmark shows that the warning should be even louder. Whereas current AHA guidelines advise using NSAIDs after MI for the briefest possible time, the Danish study, published last week in Circulation, finds that the risks for death and reinfarction begin [...]
Joe Elia • May 6th, 2011
European researchers say they’ve got the data to show that restricting salt in the general population is a bad mistake. By implication, the U.S. dietary salt guidelines are plainly wrong. How did they do this? They followed 3700 subjects for roughly 8 years, having first measured their 24-hour urinary sodium excretion. Their data show [...]
Joe Elia • April 22nd, 2011
Most clinicians, when asked, say they will routinely recommend calcium supplements for their postmenopausal patients. A meta-analysis from BMJ shows that this well-intentioned advice seems to lead to a moderate increase in cardiovascular risk in these women. We talk with Prof. Ian Reid, whose re-analysis of Women’s Health Initiative data confirms earlier work he’d [...]
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