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Cardiology Today's top 5 articles posted in September
Cardiology Today compiled a list of the top 5 stories posted to Healio.com/Cardiology in September.
This month, Cardiology Today readers were most interested in reasons for hypertension differing by sex in young adults, the link between heart and brain health, late-breaking clinical trials from the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, premature mortality rates among patients with ischemic heart disease, transvenous pacemaker complications and much more.
High BP reasons differ by sex in young adults
The factors that drive high BP differ among men and woman aged 36 to 65 years, suggesting a need for sex-specific treatments, according to findings presented at the American Heart Association Council on Hypertension, AHA Council on Kidney in Cardiovascular Disease, American Society of Hypertension Joint Scientific Sessions.
“The key takeaway from this study is that, for young and middle-aged women, stroke volume was the main determinant of blood pressure, while, in men, vascular resistance was the main determinant of blood pressure,” Catriona Syme, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, said in a press release.
AHA/ASA: Heart-healthy lifestyle also benefits brain health
A heart-healthy lifestyle can improve brain health in adults and reduce the risk for cognitive decline, including dementia, according to a presidential advisory from the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association published in Stroke.
“Research summarized in the advisory convincingly demonstrates that the same risk factors that cause atherosclerosis are also major contributors to late-life cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease,” Philip B. Gorelick, MD, MPH, FAHA, executive medical director of Mercy Health Hauenstein Neurosciences in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the chair of the advisory’s writing group, said in a press release. “By following seven simple steps — Life’s Simple 7 — not only can we prevent heart attack and stroke, we may also be able to prevent cognitive impairment.”
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AHA late-breaking clinical trials announced
New data from the CANTOS, COMPASS, FOURIER and REVEAL trials are among the late-breaking clinical trials selected for presentation at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions from Nov. 11 to 15 in Anaheim, California.
According to a release by the AHA, the late-breakers will include an analysis of residual inflammatory risk and residual cholesterol risk from the CANTOS trial of canakinumab (ACZ885, Novartis), an economic analysis of rivaroxaban (Xarelto, Janssen) plus aspirin vs. aspirin alone in patients with atherosclerotic vascular disease from COMPASS, subgroup analyses of patients with peripheral artery disease and patients with MI from the FOURIER outcomes trial of evolocumab (Repatha, Amgen) and data on patients with diabetes included in the REVEAL trial of anacetrapib (Merck).
Ischemic heart disease leading cause of premature mortality worldwide
While mortality rates have declined across all age groups worldwide, ischemic heart disease was the leading cause of premature mortality in all regions, apart from in low income countries where the leading cause was lower respiratory infections, according to The Global Burden of Disease Study, recently published in The Lancet.
Ischemic heart disease caused a total of 9.48 million deaths in 2016, an increase of 19% globally since 2006, according to the findings.
Transvenous pacemaker complications present in 1 in 6 patients by 3 years
Complications related to transvenous pacemakers have become more common and contribute to the national health care cost, according to an analysis published in JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology.
“Pacemaker complications in the real world aren’t exactly as measured in clinical trials, which are usually done in academic and other tertiary medical centers,” Daniel J. Cantillon, MD, medical director for the central monitoring unit and research director for the section of cardiac electrophysiology and pacing at Cleveland Clinic and a Cardiology Today Next Gen Innovator, told Cardiology Today. “Many centers do not voluntarily report them — as we do — but it turns out they rarely fail to bill for services rendered in managing them. This was captured by our study’s use of claims data, and the costs are staggering.”