Familial hypercholesterolaemia is characterised by substantially raised plasma concentrations of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and is associated with a risk of coronary heart disease that is five to eight times higher than average. One charity has estimated a saving of £378.7 million from cardiovascular events avoided if all relatives of index cases were identified and […]
Latest articles
Triple therapy post-PCI? WOEST clarifies
20-30% of patients taking oral anticoagulants also have ischaemic heart disease that requires treatment by percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), thereby necessitating dual anti-platelet therapy to prevent stent thrombosis. However, the combination of dual anti-platelet therapy (DAP) and anti-coagulants is associated with a high annual risk of fatal and non-fatal bleeding episodes. This study hypothesised that […]
ICD detection intervals: long or short?
Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) are now the standard of care in primary and secondary prevention of malignant arrhythmias, however with their increasing use it has been noted that ICD therapies – both appropriate and inappropriate – are associated with an increased risk of death and worsening of heart failure. The recent Multicenter Automatic Defibrillator Implantation Trial […]
Long QT syndrome mutations and intrauterine fetal death
Intrauterine fetal death occurs in approximately 1 in every 160 pregnancies; postmortem evaluation often fails to find an underlying cause. The objective of this paper was to determine the spectrum and prevalence of mutations in the three most common Long QT syndrome (LQTS) susceptible genes in a cohort of cases of unexplained intrauterine death. […]
Atherosclerosis: not just a disease of the modern age?
As life expectancy doubled between 1800 and 2000, atherosclerosis replaced infectious diseases as the main cause of death in the developed world. But is atherosclerosis a purely modern phenomenon, precipitated by lifestyle changes and an ageing population, or was it common in ancient societies too? […]
CELLWAVE: bone marrow cells improve ventricular function
In patients with chronic postinfarction heart failure, bone marrow-derived mononuclear cell (BMC) therapy has demonstrated mixed results to date. One possible reason for this is that cell retention by the heart is more difficult in the stable setting in comparison to therapies given following acute myocardial infarction, however a recent discovery found that extracorporeal application […]
Erythropoietin fails to improve outcomes in heart failure
Anaemia is common in patients with systolic heart failure and is associated with lower functional capacity, worse quality of life, and higher rates of hospitalization and death. The cause of anaemia in these patients is often unclear but may be related to an absolute or relative deficiency of, or resistance to, erythropoietin. In this study […]
Breast radiotherapy increases heart disease risk
Breast cancer remains the commonest cancer in women with approximately 1 million new cases diagnosed annually. However, survival rates have increased year-on-year with 5 year disease free survival as high as 90% in women in whom the tumour is diagnosed early. Large numbers of cancer survivors are therefore present in the population – an estimated […]
Sildenafil shows no benefit in HFPEF
Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFPEF) is now felt to be the most common form of heart failure in the community, and is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Currently, effective therapies are needed as trials of traditional renin-angiotensin antagonists have failed to show an improvement in outcomes or clinical status. Experimental work has […]
PCI: Bleeding events correlate with early mortality
Although bleeding following percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has previously been linked with short- and long-term mortality, this association was derived from highly selected randomised controlled trials. This large study used the CathPCI registry to estimate the adjusted population attributable risk of bleeding-related mortality in patients undergoing PCI in the United States. […]