CardioExchange Archive

October 4th, 2012

U.K. Study Casts Doubts on Value of Type 2 Diabetes Screening

Larry Husten, PHD

The dramatic growth in type 2 diabetes has resulted in increased interest in screening programs. Now a new study published in the Lancet raises concerns that screening programs may not result in long-term improvement in outcomes. In the ADDITION-Cambridge study, investigators in the U.K. randomized general practices to either screening or no screening.  The practices allocated to screening were […]

---

October 3rd, 2012

What Is the Benefit of Adding CRP to Risk Factor Assessment?

Larry Husten, PHD

In recent years, controversy has swirled around the role of inflammation in cardiovascular disease and the relative worth of measuring novel risk factors like C-reactive protein (CRP). Now, in a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from the Emerging Risk Factors Collaboration provide detailed calculations that estimate the benefits of adding inflammatory markers to […]

---

September 18th, 2012

International Cardiology Groups Push for Aggressive Public Health Goals

Larry Husten, PHD

Cardiovascular disease is the largest cause of death in the world and accounts for almost half of all deaths from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). Earlier this year, in response to a high-level UN meeting on NCDs in 2011, the World Health Assembly set a global target  to reduce premature NCD mortality by 25% by the year 2025. Now, the Global […]

---

September 13th, 2012

Meta-Analysis Links Stress at Work and Heart Disease

Larry Husten, PHD

A new study in the Lancet provides the best evidence yet that work-related stress and, in particular, job strain — “the combination of high job demands and low control at work” — plays a small but important role in causing heart disease. In order to address the limitations of previous studies on this topic, including […]

---

June 19th, 2012

Is Chronic Kidney Disease a CHD Risk Equivalent?

Larry Husten, PHD

A study published in the Lancet provides new data about whether chronic kidney disease (CKD) should, like diabetes, be considered a coronary heart disease (CHD) risk equivalent. Marcello Tonelli and colleagues analyzed data from a population of 1.25 million people in Alberta, Canada. During a median follow-up of 4 years, 11,340 people were admitted to the hospital […]

---

June 1st, 2012

Reality Check: Stop Exercising and Eat Chocolate?

Larry Husten, PHD

Two recent studies may add value to the academic literature, but what’s their public health value?

---

April 18th, 2012

AHA: No Convincing Evidence That Periodontal Disease Causes CV Disease

Larry Husten, PHD

Demonstrating once again that association and causation should not be confused, the American Heart Association today published a scientific statement in Circulation asserting that there is no convincing evidence showing that periodontal disease causes cardiovascular (CV) disease or that treating periodontal disease will reduce CV disease risk. The statement does not rule out the possibility that periodontal […]

---

April 10th, 2012

Baseline ECG Abnormalities in Older Patients Tied to Increased CHD Risk

Larry Husten, PHD

Although routine ECG screening in asymptomatic people is not recommended by guidelines, a new study raises the possibility that ECGs in an elderly population can provide a modest improvement in risk classification. In the Health, Aging, and Body Composition Study, published in JAMA, Reto Auer and colleagues followed 2192 adults 70 to 79 years of age without known […]

---

January 30th, 2012

Selections from Richard Lehman’s Weekly Review: Week of January 30th

Richard Lehman, BM, BCh, MRCGP

This week’s topics include lifetime cardiovascular risks, anticoagulation self-monitoring, opting for thrombolytics over late transfer for PCI, exercise’s antidepressant effect, and the worry that statins can induce diabetes.

---

January 25th, 2012

Huge Study Finds Risk Factors Do In Fact Predict Risk

Larry Husten, PHD

An enormous new meta-analysis confirms the important role that risk factors play over a lifetime in the development of cardiovascular disease. In a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Jarett Berry and colleagues report on the meta-analysis from the Cardiovascular Lifetime Risk Pooling Project, which contains data from 18 epidemiological studies including more than one-quarter million […]

---