CardioExchange Archive

December 15th, 2011

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: AHA Releases Update of Heart and Stroke Statistics

Larry Husten, PHD

Once again, statistics on the cardiovascular health of the United States portray a complicated picture of improvement and decline. On the one hand, deaths from cardiovascular disease continue to decline. On the other hand, ominous trends, many stemming from the increase in obesity, suggest that the good news may not last much longer. The full […]

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December 6th, 2011

Change in Fitness Appears More Important Than BMI Over Time

Larry Husten, PHD

Experts have been debating the relative roles of obesity and fitness in cardiovascular risk. Now a new report from the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study, published in Circulation, finds that maintaining or improving cardiorespiratory fitness significantly lowers CV mortality irrespective of changes in BMI. Duck-chul Lee and colleagues followed 14,435 men for 11.4 years. Compared with people […]

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November 16th, 2011

POWER to the People

John Ryan, MD

Several Cardiology Fellows who are attending AHA.11 this week are blogging together on CardioExchange.  The Fellows include Revathi Balakrishnan, Eiman Jahangir, John Ryan (moderator), and Amit Shah. Read the previous post here. Check back often to learn about the biggest buzz in Orlando. Tuesday, I heard the presentation of the Practice-Based Opportunities for Weight Reduction (POWER) trial, […]

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October 24th, 2011

Midlife Obesity Increases Risk for CHD Mortality

Larry Husten, PHD

Obesity in early adulthood doubles the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality, but this association is eliminated after midlife BMI is factored into the equation, according to a report in Archives of Internal Medicine. Linsay Gray and colleagues utilized data from the Harvard Alumni Health Study, which included nearly 19,000 men who were undergraduates between 1916 […]

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April 22nd, 2011

Diet and Cardiovascular Health: What’s the Bottom Line?

Eric Rimm, ScD

CardioExchange welcomes Dr. Eric Rimm, Sc.D., the director of the Program in Cardiovascular Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health and a member of the USDA’s 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Dr. Rimm answers Associate Editor Susan Cheng’s questions about the DGAC’s 2010 report. We welcome you to offer your own questions and opinions. Background: The 2010 USDA […]

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April 11th, 2011

Phentermine-Topiramate Combination Yields Significant Weight Loss

Larry Husten, PHD

The experimental diet drug combination of phentermine and topiramate demonstrated “robust efficacy” in  CONQUER, a large new trial published online in the Lancet. The trial’s results come after a year in which the FDA turned down three investigational diet drugs (including Qnexa, the phentermine-topiramate combination used here) and removed the diet drug sibutramine from the […]

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March 14th, 2011

AHA Offers Qualified Endorsement of Weight-Loss Surgery

Larry Husten, PHD

For the first time, the AHA has offered a qualified endorsement of bariatric surgery. The scientific statement, published in Circulation, states that bariatric surgery is a relatively safe procedure that can lead to long-term weight loss and significantly improve health in appropriately selected obese patients who have been unable to lose weight nonsurgically. But, said Paul Poirier, […]

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March 10th, 2011

Obesity and Cardiovascular Risk: Does Size Matter?

Larry Husten, PHD

A very large new study finds that obesity — no matter how it is calculated — is not an important independent predictor of cardiovascular disease. A report from the Emerging Risk Factors Collaboration published online in the Lancet analyzed individual records from more than 220,000 people without known cardiovascular disease and found that none of the […]

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March 7th, 2011

Meta-Analysis Finds Mediterranean Diet Helps Fight Metabolic Syndrome

Larry Husten, PHD

The Mediterranean diet may be a potent weapon in the battle to halt the growth of metabolic syndrome (MS), a new meta-analysis suggests. Christina-Maria Kastorini and colleagues performed a meta-analysis on 50 studies including nearly 535,000 participants. In their paper in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, they report that adherence to the Mediterranean […]

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February 24th, 2011

Study Probes BMI-Associated Risk in Asia

Larry Husten, PHD

The association between BMI and the risk of death in Asia is mostly similar to that seen in people of European origin, but there may be some important differences between populations, suggesting that being underweight may be a more potent risk factor than being overweight in Asia. In a large pooled analysis including more than […]

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