Dr. John's Health Matters
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Posts tagged "reoccurance"
Monday, Aug 31st, 2009 ↓Surprising Rate Of Recurring Heart Attacks, Strokes Globally →
Aug 31, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—Despite many medicines and other treatments for patients with vascular disease, a large international study shows these patients have a surprisingly high rate of recurring events such as strokes, heart attacks and hospitalizations as well as mortality.
Also unexpected: patients in North America (including the U.S.) experienced an above-average rate of these events. Patients in Eastern Europe had the highest rate, and those in Australia and Japan had the lowest.
The results from the international REACH (Reduction of Atherothrombosis for Continued Health) Registry, presented by a researcher from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, examined data for 32,247 patients one and three years after they enrolled in the registry. Patients who had symptomatic vascular disease had a 14.4 percent rate at one year and 28.4 percent rate at three years of having a heart attack, stroke, rehospitalization for another type of vascular event or vascular death. Patients with vascular disease in more than one location of the body had the highest event rate at 40.5 percent at three years.
When projected over the global population who would mirror the patients in REACH, this represents millions of serious vascular events occurring every few years, many of which could be prevented.
“We were surprised by the high rate of these recurring vascular events,” said lead author Mark J. Alberts, M.D., professor of neurology at the Feinberg School and director of the stroke program at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “We know how to prevent vascular disease and the events that it produces. This points to the need for better prevention, better use of medications and a need to develop more potent medications. These are the number one and two causes of death throughout the world.”
For full article, see link above.
Tags: heart attack cardiovascular blood vessel stroke reoccurance rehospitalization disease prevention risk
Twin Study Examines Associations Between Depression And Coronary Artery Disease →
Aug 5, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—Major depression and coronary artery disease are only modestly related throughout an individual’s lifetime, but studying how the two interact over time and in twin pairs paints a more complex picture of the associations between the conditions, according to a new report. For example, the association between coronary artery disease onset and major depression risk is much stronger over time than vice versa.
“While an association between major depression and coronary artery disease has long been noted and recently confirmed, the direction and cause of this association remain unclear,” the authors write as background information in the article. High cortisol levels, inflammation and changes in blood platelet function associated with depression may increase risk for coronary artery disease; coronary artery disease is a stressful event that may increase risk for depression; and shared genetic or environmental factors may underlie both conditions.
Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D., of Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, Richmond, and colleagues studied 30,374 twins (average age 57) from the Swedish Twin Registry. Information was obtained from telephone interviews conducted between 1998 and 2003 and also from Swedish hospital discharge and death registers.
The results of statistical models over time and of twin pairs yielded several findings, the authors note. “First, the lifetime association between major depression and coronary artery disease in this sample was modest and did not differ substantially in men and women,” they write. “Second, in more informative time-dependent analyses, coronary artery disease onset was associated with a nearly three-fold increased risk for depressive onset in that year and a nearly two-fold increase in subsequent years. The long-term effect of coronary artery disease on risk for major depression did not attenuate over time.”
“Third, given an onset of major depression, the risk for coronary artery disease onset was increased 2.5-fold in that year and much more modestly in subsequent years,” they continue. “The ongoing increased risk for coronary artery disease after major depression onset did not attenuate over time. Although modest, this future risk for coronary artery disease was strongly related to the severity and recurrence of major depression. Indeed, elevated future coronary artery disease risk was confined to individuals with recurrent episodes of major depression or those who meet more than the minimum number of diagnostic criteria.”
For full article see link above.
