CardioExchange Archive

November 17th, 2014

IMPROVE-IT Meets Endpoint and Demonstrates Real But Modest Clinical Benefit for Ezetimibe

Larry Husten, PHD

After all the waiting and all the controversy it turned out to be pretty simple. The IMPROVE-IT trial did what it set out to do and reached its primary endpoint. The benefit wasn’t very big or impressive but it will be enough to put to rest concerns that ezetimibe might have been an expensive placebo […]

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November 16th, 2014

Prolonged Dual Antiplatelet Therapy Affirmed in DAPT

Larry Husten, PHD

The advent of drug-eluting stents dramatically reduced the restenosis rate associated with bare-metal stents but prompted new concerns about the rare but potentially lethal complication of stent thrombosis (ST). Cardiologists have relied upon dual antiplatelet therapy to prevent ST but there has been considerable uncertainty and controversy about the ideal duration of therapy. The Dual Antiplatelet […]

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November 12th, 2014

Newly Identified Mutations Act Like a Lifetime of Treatment with Ezetimibe

Larry Husten, PHD

A very large genetic study published in the New England Journal of Medicine offers compelling evidence in support of a central role for LDL cholesterol in coronary heart disease. In a series of studies analyzing blood samples from nearly 100,000 people, Sekar Kathiresan and colleagues identified 15 rare mutations that block the activity of a single gene — […]

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November 12th, 2014

Popular Diets Achieve Only Modest Long-Term Weight Loss

Larry Husten, PHD

Four of the most popular current weight loss diets produce at best only modest long-term benefits, a new study published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes shows. The study also found few significant differences across the four diets, offering little hope that any one diet can produce a serious dent in the obesity epidemic. Mark Eisenberg and […]

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November 7th, 2014

What You Need to Know About IMPROVE-IT

Larry Husten, PHD

The IMPROVE-IT trial will be big news when its results are finally presented on November 17 during the annual meeting of the American Heart Association. The results of the trial — underway for nearly a decade — have been long and eagerly awaited by everyone interested in cardiovascular medicine.  The trial could impact the future sales of a key Merck drug, ezetimibe; because it is […]

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November 4th, 2014

Nonobstructive Coronary Artery Disease Linked to Elevated Risk

Larry Husten, PHD

A large number of people who undergo elective coronary angiography are found to have nonobstructive coronary artery disease, and these patients have significantly increased risk for myocardial infarction and death, according to a retrospective study published in JAMA. Thomas Maddox and colleagues analyzed data from nearly 38,000 elective angiography patients in the VA health system. More than […]

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November 3rd, 2014

AF Patients at Increased Risk for Silent Strokes

Larry Husten, PHD

The increased risk of stroke in people with atrial fibrillation (AF) is well known, and this stroke risk is, of course, linked to an increased risk of cognitive impairment and dementia. Less well known is that people with AF have an increased risk for cognitive impairment independent of their stroke risk. Now a new study […]

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November 3rd, 2014

Economic Study Finds VTE Prophylaxis with Low-Molecular-Weight Heparin Cost Effective

Larry Husten, PHD

Critically ill patients in the hospital are at high risk for developing venous thromboembolism (VTE). The 2011 PROTECT trial compared the two most common drug strategies used to prevent VTE — unfractionated heparin (UFH) and dalteparin, a low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH) —  and found no difference between the two groups in the primary endpoint of the trial, leg deep-vein thrombosis. But […]

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October 31st, 2014

FDA Advisory Panel Gives Tepid Support to New Anticoagulant

Larry Husten, PHD

On Thursday the FDA’s Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee voted 9-1 in favor of approval for Daiichi Sankyo’s edoxaban (Savaysa). The outcome will likely result in a drug that will be on the market, but that few physicians will prescribe until further studies are performed. Edoxaban will almost certainly become the fourth new oral anticoagulant (NOAC) to […]

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October 30th, 2014

Engineering Student Invents Flying Ambulance Drone to Deliver AED to SCA Patients

Larry Husten, PHD

Drones have been used to kill people in war zones and to spy on people. Now a sharp young engineering graduate student in the Netherlands has come up with an innovative new use for drones that might one day shorten the time to defibrillation for people with sudden cardiac arrest. Alec Momont, an engineering grad student […]

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