March 23, 2007, 9:39 PM CT

Drinking Wine Keeps Women's Hearts Beating

Drinking wine, but not beer or spirits, keeps women's hearts beating healthily finds research in Heart.

Much of the research on the potential health benefits of alcohol has been done on men, and it is not yet clear exactly why moderate amounts of wine seems to be good for heart health.

The Swedish research team studied 102 women under the age of 75, all of whom had survived a heart attack or heart surgery for blocked arteries. All participants were asked to record their alcohol intake for one week after a year.

And after at least a year, a heart tracing (ECG) was taken over 24 hours during routine activities in all the participants, to test heart rate variability or HRV.

HRV measures the changes in time intervals between the beats of the heart. Decreased variability has been linked to an increased risk of heart disease and death.

HRV was highest in women who drank 5 or more grams of alcohol a day, equivalent to more than half a standard unit, and lowest in those who drank no alcohol at all.

But further analysis showed that the type of alcohol consumed was important.

HRV was highest among women who drank wine, even after taking account of other influential factors, such as age, weight, and smoking habit. Beer and spirits had little impact on HRV......... Posted by: Sandra      Read more         Source

February 27, 2007, 9:33 PM CT

regenerating failing mouse hearts

Mayo Clinic scientists have safely transplanted cardiac preprogrammed embryonic stem cells into diseased hearts of mice successfully regenerating infarcted heart muscle without precipitating the growth of a malignant tumor -- which, so far, has impeded successful translation into practice of embryonic stem cell research.

The Mayo study is the first known report establishing a successful, tumor-resistant approach to growing new heart tissue from an embryonic stem cell source. The study is reported in the recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

Embryonic stem cells have the potential to become any cell type in the body. But directing the stem cells to regenerate targeted tissue is a process that hasnt yet been perfected. Researchers continue to closely scrutinize stem cell strategies to establish even safer and more effective therapys for disease.

Embryonic stem cells are like a stealth fighter jet that flies virtually undetectable by radar, says the studys first author, Atta Behfar, M.D., Ph.D., a clinician-investigator fellow in the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine. The host body doesnt recognize embryonic stem cells, which it allows to multiply freely in an unimpeded fashion.

The Mayo study is the first known report of a successful strategy for programming embryonic stem cells to suppress cancer genes, to mature into heart cells (also known as cardiomyocytes) and to successfully fix injured hearts without causing tumors to develop. The study removes a critical obstacle towards translation of regenerative technology into developing new therapies for people with heart disease......... Posted by: Sandra      Read more         Source

February 26, 2007, 6:50 PM CT

Fruit Flies And Age-related Heart Disease

La Jolla, CA, February 26, 2007 -- The tiny Drosophila fruit fly may pave the way to new methods for studying and finding therapys for heart disease, the leading cause of death in industrialized countries, as per a collaborative study by the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, UC San Diego (UCSD) and the University of Michigan.

The study reports that mutations in a molecular channel found in heart muscle cell membranes caused arrhythmias similar to those that are found in humans, suggesting that understanding how this channels activity is controlled in the cell could lead to new heart disease therapys. Led by Burnhams Professor Rolf Bodmer, Ph.D., and Staff Scientist Karen Ocorr, Ph.D., these new results, would be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will be made available by priority publication at the journals website during the week of February 26, 2007.

"This study shows that the Drosophila heart can be a model for the human heart," said Burnham researcher Bodmer. "Fly hearts have a number of ion channels that also are present in human hearts, making it suitable to extend mechanistic insight found in the fly hearts to human heart function".

The scientists focused on a membrane channel in the tiny Drosophila heart called KCNQ. This membrane channel, found in flies and humans, regulates the hearts ability to return to a relaxed state after beating. This ability is crucial to healthy cardiac functions, and the inability to return to a relaxed state results in arrhythmias, which can lead to more serious heart disease and sudden death. In both flies and humans, cardiac arrhythmia and dysfunctions become more common with age......... Posted by: Sandra      Read more         Source

February 23, 2007, 5:00 AM CT

caffeinated beverages might prevent heart disease

Intake of caffeine containing beverages on a regular basis may provides protection against heart disease mortality in the elderly, say researchers at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and Brooklyn College.

Using data from the first federal National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Epidemiologic Follow-up Study, the researchers found that survey participants 65 or more years old with higher caffeinated beverage intake exhibited lower relative risk of coronary vascular disease and heart mortality than did participants with lower caffeinated beverage intake.

John Kassotis, MD, associate professor of medicine at SUNY Downstate, said, "The protection against death from heart disease in the elderly afforded by caffeine is likely due to caffeine's enhancement of blood pressure."

The protective effect also was found to be dose-responsive: the higher the caffeine intake the stronger the protection. The protective effect was found only in participants who were not severely hypertensive. No significant protective effect was in patients below the age of 65.

No protective effect was found against cerebrovascular disease mortality death from stroke regardless of age......... Posted by: Sandra      Read more         Source

February 20, 2007, 9:11 PM CT

Cause Of Chronic Dizziness

Approximately 9 million to 15 million people in the U.S. suffer from recurrent bouts of dizziness and 3 million experience symptoms of dizziness nearly every day. According to a paper that appears in the recent issue of Archives of OtolaryngologyHead & Neck Surgery, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that chronic subjective dizziness (CSD) may have several common causes, including anxiety disorders, migraine, mild traumatic brain injuries, and neurally mediated dysautonomias disorders in the autonomic nervous system, which controls involuntary actions.

Among the various forms of dizziness, clinicians have found CSD to be particularly vexing. "Patients with CSD experience persistent dizziness not related to vertigo, imbalance, and hypersensitivity to motion, which is heightened in highly visual settings, such as walking in a busy store or driving in the rain," says Jeffrey P. Staab, MD, MS, Assistant Professor, Departments of Psychiatry and Otorhinolaryngology at Penn, and coauthor of the paper.

Staab and coauthor, Michael J. Ruckenstein, MD, Associate Professor Department of Otorhinolaryngology at Penn, studied 345 men and women age 15 to 89 (average age 43.5) who had dizziness for three months or longer due to unknown causes. From 1998 to 2004, the patients were tracked from their referral to Penns balance center through multiple specialty examinations until they were given a diagnosis......... Posted by: Sandra      Read more         Source

February 20, 2007, 9:07 PM CT

predictor of mortality in cardiac patients

Scientists at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn have determined that low levels of a protein in the blood is a predictor of cardiac death in patients with coronary artery disease.

In a group of men undergoing coronary angiography, low baseline levels of RANTES (Regulated upon Activation, Normal T-cell Expressed, and Secreted), also known as CCL5, were shown to be an independent predictor of cardiac mortality.

RANTES is a chemokine produced by a variety of cell types including blood platelets that has been implicated in atherosclerosis. Chemokines are naturally occuring human proteins that signal white blood cells to move in a specific direction, such as to an infection site.

Erdal Cavusoglu, MD, assistant professor of medicine at SUNY Downstate, and his colleagues measured baseline RANTES levels in 389 male patients at a Veterans Affairs medical center. The patients were followed prospectively for the occurrence of cardiac mortality and myocardial infarction (heart attack). Results showed that patients with the lowest level of RANTES had the lowest survival rate, and those with the highest levels had the highest survival rates. This was also true for the diabetic subset of patients in the study.

The authors propose several potential explanations for this somewhat paradoxical observation, including potential upregulation of the RANTES receptor, the CCR5 receptor, which is known for its proatherosclerotic properties. Alternatively, lower levels of RANTES may simply reflect greater deposition of RANTES on atherosclerotic arteries with less circulating levels available for measurement by routine ELISA testing......... Posted by: Sandra      Read more         Source

February 19, 2007, 8:54 PM CT

Yeast Yields Secrets Of Cholesterol And Drug Metabolism

By first probing the way primitive yeast make cholesterol, a team of scientists has discovered a long-sought protein whose human counterpart controls cholesterol production and potentially drug metabolism.

The collaborative study by scientists at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University, Indiana University and Eli Lilly Co., was published in the recent issue of Cell Metabolism.

"Dap1 controls the activity of a clinically important class of enzymes required for cholesterol synthesis and drug metabolism," says Peter Espenshade, Ph.D., assistant professor of cell biology at Johns Hopkins. "We're excited because although we originally identified this protein in yeast, humans not only have the same protein, but it works the same way".

The search for Dap1 began with the hunt for factors that influence the actions of a large family of enzymes called cytochrome P450. These enzymes control many life-sustaining chemical reactions in humans and other animals.

Happily, Espenshade says, yeast have only two P450 enzymes, and both play roles in making cholesterol, narrowing down the territory for their search and giving them a telltale marker (the cholesterol) to track.

Reasoning that whatever controls the P450s likely would be turned on and off at roughly the same time as the P450 enzymes themselves, the researchers found that Dap1 does just that in the yeast cell......... Posted by: Sandra      Read more         Source

February 12, 2007, 10:02 PM CT

Simpler Way To Cure Atrial Fibrillation

Physicians have an effective new option for treating atrial fibrillation, a common irregular heart rhythm that can cause stroke. Heart surgeons at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed and tested a device that radically shortens and simplifies a complex surgical procedure that has had the best long-term cure rate for persistent atrial fibrillation.

The simplified procedure is termed Cox-maze IV, and the surgeons believe it can replace the older "cut and sew" Cox-maze III in which ten precisely placed incisions in the heart muscle created a "maze" to redirect errant electrical impulses.

"This technology has made the Cox-maze procedure much easier and quicker to perform," says Ralph Damiano Jr., M.D., the John Shoenberg Professor of Surgery and chief of cardiac surgery at the School of Medicine and a cardiac surgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. "Instead of reserving the Cox-maze procedure for a select group of patients, we would urge use of this device for virtually all patients who have atrial fibrillation and are scheduled for other cardiac surgery."

The device is a clamplike instrument that heats heart tissue using radiofrequency energy. By holding areas of the heart within the jaws of the device, surgeons can create lines of ablation, or scar tissue, on the heart muscle. In the older Cox-maze III procedure, the lines of ablation were made by cutting the heart muscle, sewing the incisions back together and letting a scar form. The ablation lines redirect the abnormal electrical currents responsible for atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm in which the upper heart chambers or atria wriggle like a bag of worms......... Posted by: Sandra      Read more         Source

February 5, 2007, 9:46 PM CT

New pacemaker lets docs check hearts from afar

Soon, people with pacemakers won't need to drive to the hospital to give their doctors an update as to how their tickers are doing. The Latitude system is a new type of defibrillator that monitors a variety of stats, such as weight, blood pressure, and heart rate. Doctors can then request the data at any point without requiring a face-to-face appointment.

Sounds awesome, right? Yeah, I agree, but what about when your doctor can keep track of your ticker to a degree where he can call after he notices your heart rate has been too high and tell you to stop playing so actively with your kids? There's a fine privacy line here, but I think this is one case where people won't mind giving their doctor 24/7 access to what their heart is doing. After all, they've totally seen you naked. - Adam Frucci.

Lifebeat Online, via Medgadget........

Posted by: Sandra      Read more         Source

February 5, 2007, 9:29 PM CT

Weight loss linked to CHF

Various reports have suggested that increased BMI in patients with HF or who are undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention or have established CAD may be linked to decreased mortality and morbidity. Pepine said this has been called the "obesity paradox".

In November, data were presented by researcher Stefan D. Anker, MD, PhD, professor for applied cachexia research, department of cardiology, Charite-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Virchow-Klinikum, at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2006 that added support to this paradox.

However, "all of these data are observational data and cannot be used to imply cause and effect," Pepine said. A definitive, prospective study is needed that would randomize patients to a weight loss group or a weight maintenance group for more definitive answers.........

Posted by: Sandra      Read more         Source