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Month-to-month high-dose vitamin D supplementation doesn't forestall heart problems

Outcomes of a giant randomized trial point out that month-to-month high-dose vitamin D supplementation doesn't stop heart problems, in accordance with a examine revealed by  JAMA Cardiology . Research have reported elevated incidence of heart problems (CVD) amongst people with low vitamin D standing. So far, randomized medical trials of vitamin D supplementation haven't discovered an impact, probably due to utilizing too low a dose of vitamin D. Robert Scragg, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., of the College of Auckland, New Zealand, and colleagues randomly assigned adults (age 50 to 84 years) to obtain oral vitamin D3 (n = 2,558; an preliminary dose of 200,000 IU, adopted a month later by month-to-month doses of 100,000 IU) or placebo (n = 2,552) for a median of three.three years. Of the 5,108 contributors included within the main evaluation, the common age was 66 years; 25 p.c have been vitamin D poor. Heart problems occurred in 303 contributors (11.eight p.c) within the vitamin...

Fruits and vegetables' latest superpower? Lowering blood pressure

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Fresh fruits and vegetables. Credit: © Serghei Velusceac / Fotolia Eating potassium-rich foods like sweet potatoes , avocados, spinach, beans, bananas -- and even coffee -- could be key to lowering blood pressure, according to Alicia McDonough, PhD, professor of cell and neurobiology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC). "Decreasing sodium intake is a well-established way to lower blood pressure," McDonough says, "but evidence suggests that increasing dietary potassium may have an equally important effect on hypertension." Hypertension is a global health issue that affects more than one billion people worldwide. The World Health Organization estimates that hypertension is responsible for at least 51 percent of deaths due to stroke and 45 percent of deaths due to heart disease. McDonough explored the link between blood pressure and dietary sodium, potassium and the sodium-potassium ratio in a review artic...

How cells react to damage from open-heart surgical procedure

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This fluorescent picture shows completely different ranges of mitochondrial exercise, in crimson and inexperienced, in a mouse coronary heart. Credit score: Cedars-Sinai Cedars-Sinai Coronary heart Institute investigators have discovered how cardiac muscle cells react to a sure sort of damage that may be attributable to open-heart surgical procedure. The findings level to a brand new potential method to assist these hearts recuperate extra fully. The cells, generally known as cardiomyocytes, could be broken by the method of stopping and beginning the guts throughout surgical procedures that use cardiopulmonary bypass machines to take over the guts's features. Lots of of hundreds of those operations are carried out every year within the U.S. to switch failing hearts, bypass clogged arteries, repair leaky valves and extra. Whereas most sufferers recuperate simply sufficient, some sufferers undergo long-term results and even deadly coronary heart failure from the...

Increasing waistlines and metabolic syndrome: Researchers warn of latest 'silent killer'

For many years, American waistlines have been increasing and there may be growing trigger for alarm. Researchers from the Charles E. Schmidt Faculty of Drugs at Florida Atlantic College make the case that metabolic syndrome -- a cluster of three of extra danger elements that embody stomach weight problems, excessive triglycerides, hypertension, irregular lipids, and insulin resistance, a precursor of kind 2 diabetes -- is the brand new "silent killer," analogous to hypertension within the 1970s. Because it seems, the "love deal with" might be deadly. In a commentary printed within the  Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology and Therapeutics , the authors describe how being obese and weight problems contribute to metabolic syndrome, which impacts 1 in three adults and about 40 % of adults aged 40 and older. Clinicians have historically evaluated every of the most important danger elements contributing to metabolic syndrome on a person foundation. There's...

Stem cell drug display yields potential different to statins

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That is an illustration that includes foxglove , the plant from which cardiac glycosides are derived. Credit score: Illustration by Dr. Stephen Duncan, Medical College of South Carolina Scientists on the Medical College of South Carolina (MUSC) have discovered class of coronary heart failure medicine may lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) levels of cholesterol in sufferers who don't reply to statins. In a research showing within the April 6, 2017 problem of  Cell Stem Cell , cardiac glycosides decreased ranges of a precursor of LDL in liver-like cells, and sufferers taking cardiac glycosides for coronary heart failure had low LDL. Not everybody with excessive LDL ldl cholesterol responds to statins. Statins enhance ranges of a cell floor receptor that removes LDL ldl cholesterol from the bloodstream. Nonetheless, statins don't work in sufferers with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), who've a uncommon mutation in that receptor. FH sufferers have very e...

Heart specialist warns in opposition to dissolvable stents

In a  New England Journal of Medication (NEJM) editorial printed final week , Debabrata Mukherjee, M.D., gives skilled commentary on bioresorbable stents, an alternative choice to the normal stents utilized in sufferers with cardiac circumstances. In his editorial, Dr. Mukherjee encourages cardiologists to proceed utilizing standard drug-eluting stents, as an alternative of the newer bioresorbable possibility. Standard stents have had their drawbacks for years. Product of stiff metallic, the spherical, tubular construction is inserted right into a narrowed artery to open up the pathway and enhance blood movement. The drug-eluting stent is a step above this bare-metal construction; it is a system coated in an anti-tissue development remedy that is slowly launched into the bloodstream upon insertion, stopping any recurrence of blockage. "If you consider it, stents are items of metallic which might be completely positioned into the guts and other people weren't born with m...

Turning pores and skin cells into blood vessel cells whereas maintaining them younger

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This can be a mouse coronary heart part displaying human progenitor cell s that shaped practical human blood vessels. Purple shade signifies human blood vessels, crimson staining signifies the blood vessels of the mouse that obtained the human cell implants. Credit score: Jalees Rehman Researchers from the College of Illinois at Chicago have recognized a molecular swap that converts pores and skin cells into cells that make up blood vessels, which may finally be used to restore broken vessels in sufferers with coronary heart illness or to engineer new vasculature within the lab. The approach, which boosts ranges of an enzyme that retains cells younger, may circumvent the standard growing old that cells bear throughout the culturing course of. Their findings are reported within the journal  Circulation . Scientists have some ways to transform one sort of cell into one other. One approach includes turning a mature cell right into a "pluripotent" stem cell -- o...