cardiovascular diseases

An international team has carried out a review of studies and a meta-analysis on the cardiovascular safety of the drugs used to treat ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Their conclusions are that most of them, and not just the stimulants, affect the pulse and blood pressure. According to the authors, who publish the results in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry, although the changes are slight, ‘professionals should monitor blood pressure and pulse in patients with ADHD treated with any pharmacological intervention’.

An international team has created a tiny temporary pacemaker, smaller than a grain of rice (1.8 mm × 3.5 mm × 1 mm). The device is resorbable by the body, achieves effective pacing in human and various animal cardiac models, and could be implanted less invasively than existing pacemakers, according to a study published in Nature.

Genome analysis of 11,555 individuals revealed 60 genes involved in congenital heart disease, according to a study published today in the journal PNAS. Congenital heart disease is one of the most common birth defects and affects between 1 and 1.8% of live births.

Aspartame, a common sweetener used in many sugar-free foods and drinks, affects the cardiovascular health of mice and monkeys, a study claims. Consuming aspartame increases the animals' insulin levels and contributes to the development of atherosclerosis, the buildup of fatty plaque in the arteries, according to the research article published in Cell Metabolism.

In a group of people at high cardiovascular risk, low to moderate wine consumption was associated with fewer cardiovascular events (cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, stroke or heart failure), according to a study. The analysis uses urinary concentrations of tartaric acid, a substance found in grapes and grape derivatives, as a biomarker of wine consumption. It finds that consuming between three and 35 glasses per month was associated with fewer cardiovascular events than in people who consumed fewer than three or more than 35 glasses. The study, published in the European Heart Journal, included more than 1,200 participants from Spain's PREDIMED study with an average age of 68 years.

Women who drink more than 300 millilitres of milk a day (i.e. more than one and a half glasses) have a higher risk of ischaemic heart disease and acute myocardial infarction than those who drink less than this amount, according to a study based on data from more than 100,000 adults in Sweden. The results show that, from 300 millilitres upwards, the risk is higher the more milk is ingested–but only in women, not men. Drinking fermented milk, such as yoghurt and kefir, has no correlation with these risks, according to the paper published in BMC Medicine.

The relative risk of being born with a major heart defect is 36% in babies conceived using assisted reproductive techniques, such as in vitro fertilisation, compared to newborns not using these techniques, according to a study published in the European Heart Journal. The absolute risk was 1.84% versus 1.15%. The research, which included more than seven million babies born in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, also shows that the increased risk is especially associated with multiple births, which are more common in assisted reproduction.
 

In a study published in the journal Nature Medicine, a team of researchers from the National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC) proposes a new cardiovascular risk factor to add to those already known. It is clonal hematopoiesis, a phenomenon caused by acquired mutations in blood stem cells. Furthermore, in a separate study published in the European Heart Journal, they suggest that the drug colchicine could serve to reduce its effects.

Drinking alcohol and sleeping in hypobaric conditions - such as those of an aircraft cabin - could be a risk to cardiovascular health, a study warns. Researchers compared a group of 23 people sleeping in a laboratory with another group of 17 people sleeping in a high-altitude chamber, replicating conditions at about 2,400 metres above sea level. The combination of alcohol consumption and hypobaric hypoxia during the simulation "reduced sleep quality, challenged the cardiovascular system and led to extended duration of hypoxaemia," the authors state in the journal Thorax.

Research published a few days ago in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) found a considerable and hitherto unknown degree of micro- and nanoplastic contamination in human arteries. It was a bit of a surprise that NEJM accepted the paper, as it usually publishes little on the environmental causes of human disease. The good thing is that the publication makes visible, legitimises, stirs up and will encourage other similar work.