July 23, 2007, 6:08 PM CT

One in 4 NYC adults has elevated blood mercury levels

A quarter of adult New Yorkers have elevated blood mercury levels, as per survey results released recently by the Health Department, and the elevations are closely tied to fish consumption. Asian and higher-income New Yorkers eat more fish, and have higher average mercury levels, than others both locally and nationally. These mercury levels pose little if any health risk for most adults, but may increase the risk of cognitive delays for children whose mothers had very high mercury levels during pregnancy.

Major Findings on Blood Mercury Levels from NYC-HANES.

Todays findings are the latest presented from New York Citys Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NYC-HANES), the first such survey ever conducted by a U.S. city. Its possible that other cities have similarly high levels, or higher ones, but havent yet documented them. Because mercury is a concern for the health of newborns, recommendations on mercury exposure are most important for pregnant and breastfeeding women.

• Among women 20-49 years old in New York City, the average blood mercury level is 2.64 g/L (micrograms per liter), three times that of similarly-aged women nationally (0.83 g/L).
• Approximately one quarter of New York City women in this age group have a blood mercury level at or above 5 g/L, the New York State reportable level.........
  
  
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July 17, 2007, 10:27 PM CT

Can heart tissue be regenerated?

When human hearts are injured, as during a heart attack, healthy tissue normally can't regrow. Scientists now demonstrate in rats that a sponge-like patch, soaked in a compound called periostin and placed over the injury, can not only get heart cells to begin dividing and making copies of themselves again, but also improves heart function. Their findings are reported in the July 15 online edition of Nature Medicine.

Periostin is a component of the material that surrounds cells and is derived from the skin around bone. Though the mature heart only has tiny amounts, it's abundant during fetal heart development, and increased amounts are also made after skeletal-muscle injury, bone fracture and blood vessel injury, stimulating mature, specialized cells to begin dividing again. Led by Bernhard Kuhn, MD, in the Department of Cardiology at Children's Hospital Boston, the scientists theorized that placing periostin near the site of a myocardial infarction could help restore this growth-friendly environment and get heart tissue to regenerate.

Kuhn and his colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine first stimulated mature, rod-shaped heart muscle cells (known as cardiomyocytes) with periostin in a Petri dish. About 1 percent of the cells entered the mitotic cell cycle -- namely, they began dividing and replicating. (One percent seems like a small proportion, but normally the percentage is close to zero.)......... Posted by: April      Read more         Source

July 15, 2007, 9:34 PM CT

Depression lingers for female heart attack victims

Women who have suffered heart attacks have higher rates of lingering depressive symptoms in comparison to their male counterparts, a University of Alberta and McGill University study shows.

In surveying 486 patients, 102 of them female, the joint study observed that 14.3 per cent of the women had worsening depression one year after their initial myocardial infarctions, as in comparison to 11 per cent of the men. As well, the women scored lower than their male counterparts in physical and social functioning after one year (52.97 in comparison to 74.82, and 77.9 to 67.42 respectively).

We confirmed that depression definitely played a role in the quality of life of recovering patients, confirming earlier studies weve done, said Colleen Norris, lead author and an associate professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

Results of the study were published recently in the European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing.

The findings are of concern because depression impedes recovery and ultimately, the quality of life in patients following a heart event, Norris said.

The scientists suggest that women may either have a different response to the therapy for myocardial infarction, or they interpret the experience differently. Past research shows that women use different coping strategies than men. As well, Norris noted, there is evidence that women are less likely to be referred to or to attend cardiac rehabilitation and therefore they do not have access to the support and assistance in making the changes in lifestyle that are necessary for recovery after a heart attack......... Posted by: April      Read more         Source

July 12, 2007, 10:07 PM CT

High blood pressure medication strategy

Hispanic women with high blood pressure and coronary artery disease respond better to drug regimens aimed at controlling hypertension than non-Hispanic white women, University of Florida scientists report.

A UF study described in the current issue of the Journal of Womens Health revealed that when treated with either of two usually prescribed medicine strategies, Hispanic women achieved greater blood pressure control and were half as likely as white women to suffer adverse outcomes such as heart attack, stroke or death from any cause. The findings provide new data on a population of ethnic women who have been all but absent from such research.

The study is unique in that we enrolled a substantial number of women and a substantial number of Hispanic patients from a variety of different Hispanic regions. As a result, we have data that enabled us to really fully evaluate the therapy of high blood pressure in this ethnically diverse group, said Rhonda Cooper-DeHoff, Pharm.D, M.S., a research assistant professor of medicine and associate director of the clinical research program in cardiovascular medicine at UFs College of Medicine.

UF scientists studied 22,500 patients enrolled in the landmark International Verapamil SR-Trandolapril study, known as INVEST, and tracked a subgroup of 5,017 Hispanic and 4,710 non-Hispanic white women who were randomly assigned to a drug strategy containing either a sustained release form of the calcium antagonist verapamil or the beta-blocker atenolol......... Posted by: April      Read more         Source

July 11, 2007, 5:33 AM CT

High Blood Pressure May Mask Potentially Deadly Heart Condition

New research published in Psychophysiology finds a relationship between increased blood pressure and decreased pain perception in a variety of circumstances, including among individuals with heart disease. This phenomenon extends to those who typically suffer chest pain during exercise, and may be correlated with a potentially deadly heart condition.

The new study draws on data collected from over 900 patients undergoing exercise stress testing to diagnose possible myocardial ischemia (MI), a condition where oxygenated blood is prevented from reaching the heart because an artery has become blocked or constricted.

Generally, exercise should produce pain in these situations; however some patients experience "silent" cases of MI in which no pain is felt. Prior studies have suggested that hypertension and silent ischemia may be correlated, and this new research provides further validation.

"This has implications for several areas, such as the effects of stress, non-adherence to therapy and silent myocardial ischemia," says Bianca D'Antono, author of the study. "Further research will be needed to better understand the relationship between blood pressure, pain perception and heart disease"......... Posted by: April      Read more         Source

July 5, 2007, 9:17 PM CT

What Is And Isn't A Heart Attack

Varying advice means patients at high-risk of having a heart attack are unclear about when symptoms are potentially life threatening and when they should call an ambulance, argue a group of cardiologists in this weeks BMJ.

At least 70% of people who die from coronary heart disease have had prior heart problems.

Yet recent data from the British Heart Foundation shows that 40% of the general population would not immediately call an ambulance during a suspected heart attack and the greatest delays in calling 999 are among the high-risk group.

This implies, say Dr Khavandi and his colleagues, that high-risk patients do not seem to be receiving clear effective guidance from their doctors.

One of the symptoms of a heart attack is angina. Yet angina can also be a stable condition which lasts only a few minutes and can be controlled by medication. The writers say ideally they would like patients to be able to tell the difference between the two types but in reality they do not.

In particular, high-risk patients with ischaemic heart disease (IHD) - which causes a reduction in the blood supply to the heart, commonly felt as angina - are given varying advice from doctors, health organisations and drug manufacturers about how to use the drugs (sublingual nitrate GTN sprays) prescribed to relieve the condition......... Posted by: April      Read more         Source

July 3, 2007, 9:34 PM CT

Cardiac surgery in patients with liver cirrhosis

A new study on the outcome of cardiac surgery in patients with liver cirrhosis observed that the surgery can safely be performed in patients with milder disease, while those with more severe cirrhosis are less likely to survive.

The results of this study appear in the July 2007 issue of Liver Transplantation, the official journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and the International Liver Transplantation Society (ILTS). The journal is published on behalf of the societies by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and is available online via Wiley InterScience at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/livertransplantion.

In abdominal surgery, it is well known that the severity of liver cirrhosis, as measured by the Child-Pugh classification (a scoring system used to gauge the severity of liver disease) correlates directly with surgical outcome. However, few studies have reported how these patients fare when undergoing cardiac surgery.

Led by Farzan Filsoufi, of Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, NY, scientists conducted a retrospective study of patients who underwent cardiac surgery at Mt. Sinai Medical Center between January 1998 and December 2004, and identified 27 patients who had cirrhosis. Of these, 18 patients had cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass (heart-lung machine) while the other 9 had surgery without using the heart-lung machine......... Posted by: April      Read more         Source

June 28, 2007, 11:36 PM CT

Angioplasty procedure can damage kidneys

The most common procedure for clearing blocked kidney arteries can also release thousands of tiny particles into the bloodstream that can impair kidney function, as per scientists from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and his colleagues.

This is the first data in humans to show that debris released during angioplasty and stenting of the kidney arteries can be harmful to kidney function, said Matthew Edwards, M.D., M.S., lead researcher and an assistant professor of surgery. It raises important questions about how to most safely perform this very common procedure.

Edwards said that understanding more about potential complications from the procedure can lead to improved therapys. The study, published in the current issue of the Journal for Vascular Surgery, suggests that having patients stop aspirin use before the procedure may lead to worse results. It also shows that stent size is important and raises questions about whether blocking or filtering out the debris, known as emboli, may be effective in improving results.

New devices exist that may prevent the passage of this debris into the kidney and may lead to better patient outcomes, said Edwards. We are currently conducting a clinical trial to explore this question.

As a number of as 3.5 million Americans over age 65 years have blocked kidney arteries that can lead to severe hypertension and kidney failure. These patients have a greater risk of having heart attacks or strokes, becoming dependent on dialysis, or dying......... Posted by: April      Read more         Source

June 27, 2007, 5:31 AM CT

Transplanting Angina Patients' Purified Stem Cells

The first U.S. study to transplant a potent form of purified adult stem cells into the heart muscle of patients with severe angina provided evidence that the procedure is safe and produced a reduction in angina pain as well as improved functioning in patients' daily lives, reports the lead researcher at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

Within three to six weeks after the severe angina patients were injected with their own stem cells, a number of who used to experience pain just from walking to the refrigerator, now only had pain when they climbed two flights of stairs.

This is the first human trial in which patients' own purified stem cells, called CD-34 cells, were injected into their hearts in an effort to spur regrowth of small blood vessels that constitute the microcirculation of the heart muscle. Scientists believe the loss of these blood vessels contributes to the pain of chronic, severe angina.

While lead researcher, Douglas Losordo, M.D., cautioned this was a small pilot study, he said the results are encouraging. "That's a very meaningful change in lifestyle or functional capacity," he noted.

Losordo is director of the Feinberg Cardiovascular Research Institute and the Eileen M. Foell Professor of Heart Research at the Feinberg School. He also is a heart specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He conducted the research while he was a professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine......... Posted by: April      Read more         Source

June 22, 2007, 5:13 AM CT

Stem cells to repair damaged heart muscle

In the first trial of its kind in the world, 60 patients who have recently suffered a major heart attack will be injected with selected stem cells from their own bone marrow during routine coronary bypass surgery.

The Bristol trial will test whether the stem cells will repair heart muscle cells damaged by the heart attack, by preventing late scar formation and hence impaired heart contraction.

Dr Raimondo Ascione from the University of Bristol and his colleagues at the Bristol Heart Institute (BHI) have been awarded a grant of 210,000 from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) to conduct the clinical trial.

Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director of the BHF, said: We hope that this exciting Bristol project will provide information taking us a step nearer to the day when stem cells can be used routinely to help repair damaged hearts.

In a heart attack, part of the heart muscle loses its blood supply (commonly due to furring up of the arteries with fatty material) and cells in that part of the heart die, leaving a scar. This reduces the ability of the heart to pump blood around the body.

While the blood supply to the heart can be improved with coronary bypass surgery or angioplasty, thereby reducing the risk of further heart attacks, these techniques do not restore the viability and function of the area already damaged......... Posted by: April      Read more         Source