CardioExchange Archive

The IOM Passes the Salt to the FDA: The Institute of Medicine released a report, “Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake in the United States,” that urges the FDA to set “new government standards for the accept­able level of sodium.” The goal, according to the report, “is to slowly, over time, reduce the sodium content of the food supply in a way that goes unnoticed by most consumers as individuals’ taste sensors adjust to the lower levels of sodium.”
   The FDA said that it has “begun the process of regulating the amount of sodium in foods” but “is not currently working on regulations nor has it made a decision to regulate sodium content in foods at this time.” The FDA said it plans to review the IOM report and “build plans for how the FDA can continue to work with other federal agencies, public health and consumer groups, and the food industry to support the reduction of sodium levels in the food supply.”

Promising Results for Novel Dual DES: A novel sirolimus- and probucol-eluting stent (DUAL DES) continues to perform well at 2 years when compared to the sirolimus-eluting stent (SES) and the zotarolimus-eluting stent (ZES). Robert Byrne and colleagues report the 2-year results of the ISAR-TEST-2 trial in an expedited publication in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The investigators had previously reported a lower binary restenosis rate in the DUAL DES group compared to the ZES group but a similar rate when compared to the SES group at 6-8 months. Now, at 2 years, the rate of target lesion revascularization was 7.7% in the DUAL DES group, 10.7% in the SES group, and 14.3% in the ZES group, but only the difference between DUAL DES and ZES achieved statistical significance.