Cardiovascular Disease: New Risk Factor Found
A team of international researchers have discovered that having high levels of a particular protein puts patients at increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

The results of the study were so conclusive that the clinical trial had to be stopped before its scheduled completion date. Researchers associated with the international JUPITER Project have demonstrated that high levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) leads to increased risk of cardiovascular disease. This risk decreases by up to 44 percent if the patients are treated with statin medications.

"The risk of cardiovascular disease due to increased hs-CRP levels has been greatly underestimated until now," according to Jacques Genest who led the Canadian component of the JUPITER clinical study. "Our results show that this is an extremely important indicator that doctors will have to consider in the future."
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Some industries are obvious energy hogs: airlines, autos, office buildings. Others, like health care, are stealthier consumers. But the U.S. health-care infrastructure is one of the country's hungriest users of energy. Medical procedures, for instance, rack up massive energy tabs — especially surgeries, emergency services and pathology laboratory tests. "Enormous amounts of energy are required to build and run high-tech systems in common use — MRIs, CT scans, etc. — with many running 24 hours a day," says Pamela Gray, a trustee of the Transition Network, a U.K.-based organization that supports community-level initiatives to improve sustainability and combat climate change. Further, nearly all pharmaceuticals are made from petroleum derivatives, and so are medical materials (think rubber gloves and intravenous tubing). And then there's transportation: transferring equipment, supplies and lab samples, or getting patients to the right facility, sometimes by ambulance or helicopter.

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US scientists may have uncovered a reason why heart attacks and strokes occur most often in the early hours. The Emory University team say daily rhythms in the activity of cells that line blood vessels may be key. They found the activity of these cells was at its lowest ebb in the early hours of the morning.

The study, presented to an American Heart Association conference, suggests this might make blood vessels less able to relax, raising the risk of problems. Cells called endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) from the bone marrow are thought to play an important role in maintaining the lining of the blood vessels.

These cells are essentially stem cells that help replace the endothelial cells that line the blood vessels at the site of an injury, and build new vessels at sites deprived of adequate blood supply. The Emory team looked to see whether cell activity, and the properties of the blood vessels changed at different times of the day. They tested 12 healthy middle aged volunteers every four hours throughout a 24-hour period.

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The lives of nearly 8,000 black Americans could be saved each year if doctors could figure out a way to bring their average blood pressure down to the average level of whites, a surprising new study found. The gap between the races in controlling blood pressure is well-known, but the resulting number of lives lost startled some scientists. "We expected it to be big, but it was even larger than we anticipated," said the lead author, Dr. Kevin Fiscella of the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry.

The study, released Monday in the Annals of Family Medicine, is being called the first to calculate the lives lost due to racial disparities in blood pressure control. Fiscella said he believes steps can be taken to erase that gap. But a second article in the same journal found that racial differences in blood pressure treatment persisted in England despite a national health system that provides equal access to care.

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A much-anticipated study released Nov. 9 at the American Heart Association's annual meeting confirms what doctors have long suspected: that inflammation may be as critical a predictor for heart-disease risk as is a patient's cholesterol score. The study's results suggest that using statins to treat the symptoms of inflammation, an oft-overlooked condition, may nearly halve people's risk of future heart attack, stroke and heart-related death.

Led by Dr. Paul Ridker at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, the study tracked about 17,800 people in 26 countries. Participants included men ages 50 and older and women ages 60 and older, who had high levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) but normal cholesterol levels and no history of heart disease. Half the participants were given rosuvastatin (Crestor), and half were given a placebo daily for just under two years. The statin group reduced their CRP levels by 37%; their LDL, or bad cholesterol, levels dropped 50% to about 55 mg/dL. Among the 8,901 statin-takers, 31 suffered a heart attack and 33 suffered a stroke. When compared with the placebo group, those figures translated to a 54% lower risk of heart attack and a 48% lower risk of stroke in people taking a statin for inflammation — double the reduction of risk in patients who lower their cholesterol alone.

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A "genuine debate" on how care services in Wales should be funded is being launched by the assembly government. Wales has a larger elderly population than the rest of the UK, putting increasing strain on the care system. The consultation will run in parallel with one in England, prompted by predictions services will face a £6bn funding gap across the UK in 20 years.

It will consider whether individuals, families or society should contribute more towards care costs in the future. Questions will be asked, such as whether the care and support system should be the same for everybody or vary, according to circumstances or local priorities. How best to strike a balance between targeting government resources to those least able to pay and having a system which encourages people to plan and save will also be investigated. 

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Vitamins C and E do nothing to prevent heart disease in men, one of the largest and longest studies of these supplements has found.Vitamin E even appeared to raise the risk of bleeding strokes, a danger seen in at least one earlier study. Besides questioning whether vitamins help, "we have to worry about potential harm," said Barbara Howard, a nutrition scientist at MedStar Research Institute of Hyattsville, Maryland.

She has no role in the research but reviewed and discussed it Sunday at an American Heart Association conference. Results also were published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association. Male smokers taking vitamin E had a higher rate of bleeding strokes in a previous study, and several others found no benefit for heart health. As for vitamin C, some research suggests it may aid cancer, not fight it. A previous study in women at high risk of heart problems found it did not prevent heart attacks.

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