Heart Disease News and Research

Latest Heart Disease News and Research

Pinch of salt: How much is enough?

Salt restriction in the normal diet has come under debate. While scientists are questioning the complex role of sodium in the body and the need for salt restriction, surveys have found that dietary sodium has not gone down well in large populations despite awareness on the risks of too much salt intake.

21 Oct 2010

Potential SIDS cause found

A baffling condition Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) that leads to the unexplained deaths of many infants worldwide may have been explained in new Australian research. The researchers monitored babies as they slept on their bellies and found that they have reduced blood pressure and an increased heart rates, compared with when they slept on their backs as recommended. This effect is seen more in babies aged two to three months, the age when babies are most at risk of SIDS.

21 Oct 2010

Australian stem cell line offers fresh approach to diabetes cure

Australian researchers have developed the country’s first diabetes specific stem cell line, a major advance for patients suffering from the chronic disease.

21 Oct 2010

Astellas suspends enrollment in ACT 5 study of KYNAPID in atrial fibrillation patients

Cardiome Pharma Corp. today announced that its co-development partner, Astellas Pharma US., Inc., has suspended patient enrollment in the ACT 5 study of KYNAPIDTM (vernakalant hydrochloride) Injection following a single unexpected serious adverse event of cardiogenic shock experienced by a patient with atrial fibrillation who received KYNAPID.

21 Oct 2010

Bruker installs BioSpec 170/25 system at CEA NeuroSpin research center

Bruker announced today that it has successfully installed its BioSpec® 170/25 system at the CEA NeuroSpin research center near Paris, France. The world's first horizontal ultra-high magnetic field 17.2 Tesla MRI system features a magnet bore diameter of 25 cm. It is equipped with a novel Bruker BGA-S™ gradient system with unsurpassed amplitude and slew rate specifications for cutting-edge preclinical in vivo imaging on small animals.

21 Oct 2010

Health Canada approves ULORIC to lower serum uric acid levels in patients with gout

Takeda Canada, Inc. is pleased to announce that ULORIC® (febuxostat), an innovative oral urate-lowering therapy to lower serum uric acid levels in patients with gout is now available in Canada. This medication is the first new treatment option in more than 40 years for the approximately three per cent of Canadians who have hyperuricemia associated with gout.1 ULORIC was discovered by Teijin Pharma Limited of Tokyo and licensed to Takeda for the Canada market.

21 Oct 2010

PolyMedix plans PMX-60056 Phase 2 clinical trial in interventional cardiology

PolyMedix, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on developing new therapeutic drugs to treat infectious diseases and acute cardiovascular disorders, has announced plans for a Phase 2 clinical trial of PMX-60056 in interventional cardiology, and the establishment of a focused Heptagonist Clinical Advisory Board (CAB). PMX-60056 is a synthetic small-molecule designed to reverse the anticoagulant activity of heparin and low molecular weight heparins (LMWH).

21 Oct 2010

Kensey Nash 2011 first quarter decreases 14% to $17.0 million

Kensey Nash Corporation , a medical device company primarily focused on regenerative medicine for a wide range of medical procedures, today reported the results for its first quarter ended September 30, 2010.

21 Oct 2010

Baxter third quarter net income increases 12% to $595 million

Baxter International Inc. today announced its financial results for the third quarter of 2010, and provided its fourth quarter and updated full-year 2010 financial outlook.

From Baxter International Inc. 21 Oct 2010

IDEV includes two stents to SUPERA product line for treating patients with peripheral vascular disease

IDEV Technologies, Incorporated (IDEV), an innovative leader in the development and commercialization of minimally invasive medical technologies, today announced another step in the implementation of its strategy to expand its product line for treating patients with peripheral vascular disease with the addition of two longer stents to its SUPERA product line.

21 Oct 2010

Cerenis raises €10 million in second close of Series C financing

Cerenis Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company specializing in the research and development of novel therapies based on HDL to treat cardiovascular and other metabolic diseases, announced today it has raised a further €10 million in a second close of its Series C financing. This takes the total funds raised in the Series C to €50 million and the total equity investment raised to date by the Company to €117 million.

21 Oct 2010

Venn Life Sciences acquires French CRO

Venn Life Sciences a multinational Clinical Research Organisation (CRO) announced today that it has acquired French CRO, DCI.

21 Oct 2010

Major companies phase out BPA from food and beverage packaging

Major brand name companies including Hain Celestial, H.J. Heinz, ConAgra, and General Mills are taking a leadership role in responding to consumer market shifts as awareness about health hazards of the endocrine disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA) in food can linings rises.

21 Oct 2010

Female sex hormones help women survive after trauma

Women who have been severely injured are 14 percent more likely to survive than similarly injured men, according to a new Johns Hopkins study, a difference researchers believe may be due to the negative impact of male sex hormones on a traumatized immune system.

21 Oct 2010

Tel Aviv University research links obsessive-compulsive disorder to common childhood illness

A common infection in children, strep throat can lead to problems with a child's heart, joints or brain if left untreated. And when the brain is involved, motor and mental functioning may be compromised, leading to syndromes such as attention deficit disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

21 Oct 2010

FDA asks manufacturers to add new warnings to labeling of prostate cancer drugs

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today asked manufacturers to add new warnings to labeling of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists, a class of drugs primarily used to treat men with prostate cancer.

21 Oct 2010

Researcher identifies two risk markers for Alzheimer's disease

Risk markers could play an important role in this. These are substances linked to Alzheimer's that are found in unusually high or unusually low quantities in patients who go on to develop the disease.

21 Oct 2010

Hormone therapy associated with increased risk of death from breast cancer

Results of a new Women's Health Initiative (WHI) report show that hormone therapy is associated with an increased the risk of death from breast cancer, as well as an increased risk of developing invasive breast cancer in postmenopausal women.

21 Oct 2010

Stereotaxis launches Odyssey Interventional Network portal for global cardiovascular community

Stereotaxis, Inc. announced today that it launched the Odyssey Interventional Network, a training and educational video sharing web portal for the global cardiovascular community. The portal will showcase innovative electrophysiology (EP) and interventional cardiology (IC) procedures from leading centers around the world.

21 Oct 2010

Eating whole grains and limiting refined grains reduce body fat

People who consume several servings of whole grains per day while limiting daily intake of refined grains appear to have less of a type of fat tissue thought to play a key role in triggering cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, a new study suggests. Researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Researcher Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University observed lower volumes of visceral adipose tissue (VAT) in people who chose to eat mostly whole grains instead of refined grains.

21 Oct 2010