CardioExchange Archive

Good News & Bad News for Calcium Scores: Using data from 5,878 participants in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), Polonsky and colleagues assessed the value of adding coronary artery calcium (CAC) scores to traditional risk factor assessments. In their report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the investigators concluded that adding CAC scores to traditional risk factors “significantly improved the classification of risk and placed more individuals in the most extreme risk categories.”
   In an accompanying editorial, John Ioannidis and Ioanna Tzoulaki generally praise the study, but write that “the authors have not yet demonstrated that the added accuracy in risk stratification can actually aid clinicians in better treating patients or improving their clinical outcomes. Therefore, their findings, no matter how promising, do not suffice to recommend this marker for widespread routine use.” They also point out the radiation risk associated with CAC screening and note that “routine implementation at the population level can be very expensive.”

Really Bad News for Steroid Users: Anabolic steroids may damage the heart more than previously thought, according to a new study in Circulation: Heart Failure. Aaron Baggish and colleagues compared echo measurements in 12 weightlifters who used illicit anabolic-androgenic steroids and 7 weightlifters who were otherwise similar but did not use steroids. When compared to non-steroid users, the steroid users had lower LVEFs (50.6% vs. 59.1%), longitudinal strain (16.9% vs. 21.0%), and radial strain (38.3% versus 50.1%). “I think for the first time we’re starting to realize that the heart is one of the organs that is negatively impacted by long-term steroid use,” said Baggish, in an AHA press release.