You’re sitting at your desk and suddenly your heart is beating in overdrive or worse, lurching along like a car on fumes. It is a shocking, uncomfortable and frightening sensation. – Irregular heart rhythms are a common cause of sudden cardiac death or SCD, a condition that accounts for 450,000 deaths annually in the United States.
Feeling down and out could break your heart, literally. Research links depression to cardiac death in women without known heart disease. – Relatively healthy women with severe depression are at increased risk of cardiac events, including sudden cardiac death (SCD) and fatal coronary heart disease (CHD).
Older adults at high risk for drug interactions. More attention needed for non-prescription meds. – At least one in 25 older adults, about 2.2 million people in the United States, take multiple drugs in combinations that can produce a harmful drug-drug interaction, and half of these interactions involve a non-prescription medication, researchers from the University of Chicago Medical Center report in the Dec. 24/31, 2008, issue of JAMA.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has notified manufacturers of fluoroquinolone antimicrobial drugs that a Boxed Warning in the product labeling concerning the increased risk of tendinitis and tendon rupture is necessary. – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requests boxed warnings on fluoroquinolone antimicrobial drugs. FDA seeks this to strengthen warnings concerning increased risk of tendinitis and tendon rupture.
Researchers have succeeded in growing large numbers of stem cells from adult human hearts into new heart muscle cells. – Dutch researchers at University Medical Center Utrecht and the Hubrecht Institute have succeeded in growing large numbers of stem cells from adult human hearts into new heart muscle cells. A breakthrough in stem cell research.
Special issue of JACC features intriguing link between statins and Atrial Fibrillation (AF) prevention, tools to ensure the highest-quality AF care, and more. – When we’re young, a racing heart often means love is in the air. If you’re a “baby boomer,” it might mean you’ve just joined the 2.2 million Americans who have atrial fibrillation (AF), an irregularity in the heart’s rhythm that grows more common as we age and markedly increases the risk for stroke.
There has been much concern about the possibility of increased risk for heart attack and stroke in users of NSAID drugs, particularly COX-2 selective NSAIDs such as celecoxib. – COX-2 inhibitors like Celecoxib have come under scrutiny lately due to adverse cardiovascular side-effects stemming from COX-2 reduction. In both fruit fly and rat models, researchers reveal another adverse effect of Celecoxib; this drug can induce arrhythmia. More interestingly, this effect is independent of the COX-2 enzyme.
