An HIV Treatment that Raises Heart Attack Risk Jul 20 02:59am Treatment of people with HIV with combination antiretroviral therapy (ART, a mix or "cocktail" of drugs that fight the virus which causes HIV) has greatly improved the health and life span of people living with HIV infections. Yet these... Read more

Good News About Estrogen Therapy After Menopause Jul 09 11:56am Postmenopausal women and their doctors are getting tired of trying to use "evidence-based medicine" to make decisions about hormone replacement therapy (HRT). At first, I and other physicians enthusiastically embraced HRT when nearly 30... Read more

Weight Loss Therapy May Improve Heart Health Markers Jul 04 02:49am Abnormal function of the endothelial cells, which line the walls of all blood vessels, and elevated levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) are associated with an increased risk of heart attacks. Obese people tend to have abnormal endothelial cell... Read more

Blood Pressure: Can You Avoid Medications? Jun 30 06:41am Hypertension (high blood pressure) is an exceedingly common underlying cause of heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, and kidney disease in the United States. And studies have shown that the likelihood of all of these complications of hypertension... Read more

Aerobic Exercise Raises HDL Cholesterol Jun 26 12:23pm Exercise is always one of the first recommendations for improving blood cholesterol levels, but do readily achievable amounts of exercise really improve HDL and LDL cholesterol? A report in the Archives of Medicine describes a meta-analysis that... Read more

Heart Attacks and Flu Death Relationship Jun 21 03:18pm Many of us have grown accustomed to the troublesome symptoms of influenza, but we rarely think about how serious the disorder can be except when we are reminded of the influenza epidemic following the First World War (which killed 20 million to 50... Read more

ED: Powerful Predictor of Coronary Heart Disease Jun 19 08:01am Erectile dysfunction (ED) is estimated to affect more than half of men between ages 40 and 70 and about 70 percent of men over the age of 70. Although an association between ED and coronary heart disease (CHD) was suggested more than 20 years ago, an... Read more

More Benefits from Restricting Sodium Jun 15 07:56am We've all known for some time that people with hypertension can lower their blood pressure by reducing the sodium in their diets. What we didn't know was whether, by consuming less salt (sodium chloride, the main form of sodium in the diet),... Read more

Who Benefits the Most From Statins? Jun 12 03:49am A number of clinical trials have shown that treatment with statin medications reduces the likelihood of heart attacks and strokes in people with known coronary heart disease (CHD). However, not everyone with CHD benefits equally from statin therapy.... Read more

Beware of Trans Fat Substitutes Jun 08 02:32am There is general agreement by now that trans fats increase the risk of heart disease by raising LDL cholesterol and lowering HDL cholesterol. Legislation has been passed in some cities that prohibits restaurants from using trans fats, and such laws... Read more