CardioExchange Archive

February 15th, 2013

Amid Rising Tide of Diabetes More Patients Reach Treatment Goals

Larry Husten, PHD

There’s a glimmer of good news amidst all the recent bad news about diabetes. Although the prevalence of diabetes has doubled over the last generation, more people today are reaching their treatment goals than in the past. New data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES), published online today in Diabetes Care, show that efforts to control hemoglobin […]

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December 27th, 2012

Selections from Richard Lehman’s Literature Review: December 27th

Richard Lehman, BM, BCh, MRCGP

This week’s topics include an intensive lifestyle intervention and its association with type-2 diabetes remission, strategies for multivessel revascularization in patients with diabetes, and more.

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October 31st, 2012

PCSK9 Inhibitor Enhances Cholesterol-Lowering Effect of Atorvastatin

Larry Husten, PHD

When added to low-dose atorvastatin, a much-discussed new monoclonal antibody to PCSK9 significantly lowers cholesterol more effectively than atorvastatin alone, according to a phase 2 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Earlier this year, in March, the findings of three phase 1 trials demonstrating the cholesterol-lowering effects of the drug in healthy […]

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October 18th, 2012

FDA Panel Recommends Approval of Mipomersen for Homozygous Familial Hypercholesterolemia

Larry Husten, PHD

The FDA’s Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee gave a weak endorsement to mipomersen, an antisense oligonucleotide inhibitor manufactured by Genzyme, for use in homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). With its relatively close 9-6 vote, and with its comments, the committee expressed concerns about both the efficacy and safety of the drug, but ultimately the severity of […]

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October 18th, 2012

Should Hypercholesterolemia Treatments Start Much Sooner in Life?

Keeping LDL cholesterol low throughout life is more effective at preventing atherosclerotic disease than starting statins in middle age, a series of analyses in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology shows. Researchers first established the effects of several genetic variations on naturally lowering LDL. People with one or more of these variants had their […]

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October 16th, 2012

FDA Review Raises Safety Concerns About Mipomersen

Larry Husten, PHD

An FDA review raises a number of potentially significant safety concerns about the cholesterol-lowering drug mipomersen. The review appears ahead of a Thursday meeting of the Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee to evaluate Genzyme’s new drug application (NDA) for use of the drug as an adjunct to maximally tolerated lipid-lowering medications and diet to reduce […]

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May 17th, 2012

Large Meta-Analysis Finds Statins Effective in Low-Risk Patients

Larry Husten, PHD

A very large meta-analysis provides strong evidence that the relative reduction in vascular risk with statins is at least as great in low-risk patients as in high-risk patients. The finding, write the authors, provides evidence that expansion of guidelines to lower-risk populations should be considered. In their paper in the Lancet, the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ (CTT) Collaborators […]

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April 3rd, 2012

Why We Should Abandon LDL Cholesterol Targets

Harlan M. Krumholz, MD, SM

In an interview on CurrentMedicine.TV, CardioExchange editor-in-chief Harlan Krumholz discussed an editorial he co-authored with Rodney Hayward on why the NIH’s forthcoming Adult Treatment Panel IV should abandon LDL Targets.

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January 19th, 2012

Are We Ready to Stop Treating Cholesterol Levels and Start Treating Risk?

Harlan M. Krumholz, MD, SM

With the advent of ATPIV, should we stick with determining treatment based on LDL levels or is time for a new paradigm based on a more nuanced understanding of risk?

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June 8th, 2011

FDA Recommends Limiting Use of High-Dose Simvastatin

Larry Husten, PHD

The FDA today recommended significant limitations in the use of high-dose (80 mg) simvastatin because of the increased risk for myopathy. The FDA said the 80-mg dose should be used only in people who have been taking the high dose for at least one year and have had no evidence of myopathy. The high dose […]

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