CardioExchange Archive

Add Sugar, Add Risk: People with diets that contain large amounts of added sugars (e.g., high-fructose corn syrup) have lower HDL levels and higher triglyceride levels, according to a new report from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) appearing in JAMA. “Monitoring trends in consumption and understanding the effect added sugars have on risk of cardiovascular and other diseases is critically important, because added sugars are a potentially modifiable source of calories,” write Jean Welsh and colleagues in their paper.
   “Added sugars are food additives that can be recognized by consumers and have been proposed for specific labeling on food and beverage packaging,” they add. “The results of our study demonstrate that increased added sugars are associated with important cardiovascular disease risk factors, including lower HDL-C levels, higher triglyceride levels, and higher ratios of triglycerides to HDL-C.”

Fill the Plavix Prescription, or Else… One in six patients who received a drug-eluting stent didn’t fill their clopidogrel prescription immediately, and these patients had a greater risk for subsequent events, according to a large retrospective study by P. Michael Ho et al. in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. The incidence of death or MI was 7.9% in those who filled their prescriptions on the day of discharge compared to 14.2% in those who delayed filling their prescriptions.