Stop For A Heart Attack-Before it Gets Started

7/26/2009

Sunday, July 26 (Benjamin Rose Institute ) -- Cleveland, OH

Your heart is an amazing organ. It’s about the size of your fist and sits in the middle of your chest. Three times every minute the hard working heart pumps 6 quarts of blood throughout your body. Over a lifetime that’s about 1 million barrels of blood.

Most people don’t pay much attention to their heart until something goes wrong with it -- like a heart attack.

HEART DISEASE FACTS

Heart disease is a major cause of death in the United States. More than 80 percent of people who die of a heart attack are 65 or older. Older men are more likely to suffer a heart attack than older women although older women are more likely to die from it sooner than men. If you have a parent with heart disease you are at greater risk of developing heart-related illnesses yourself.

WARNING SIGNS OF A HEART ATTACK

• Common signs of heart attacks in men and women include:
• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
• Pressure, fullness, discomfort in the center of the chest
• Pain radiating to the shoulders, back, neck, arms or jaw
• Pounding heartbeats or extra heartbeats
• Sweating, nausea, vomiting, indigestion
• Dizziness, weakness, lightheadedness
• Sudden extreme fatigue or panic
• Abdominal pain.

However women may have only a few of these symptoms and may not experience chest pain at all.

WHAT CAUSES HEART ATTACKS?

Heart attacks happen when the arteries that supply the heart with blood become blocked with fatty deposits called plaque. Over time these plaques rupture and cause blood clots to form. The clots block the artery and prevent it from supplying the heart muscle with oxygen. Without prompt treatment to remove or dissolve the clots, parts of the heart muscle begin die and are replaced by scar tissue. When a damaged heart can no longer pump blood effectively, irregular heartbeats develop that can lead to heart failure and death.

HEART DISEASE RISK FACTORS

Some heart attack risks can’t be changed although they can be reduced. At greater risk are people with a family history of heart disease, African Americans, Mexican Americans, American Indians, native Hawaiians, and some Asian Americans.

STOP A HEART ATTACK IN ITS TRACKS!

The good news is that the risk of having a heart attack can be reduced. If you older parent has a family history of heart disease both of you should have regular medical checkups to detect and treat the disease in its early stages.

Changing lifestyles and habits can significantly reduce the chances of having a heart attack for your family member – and for you. Join your older parent to:

• Stop smoking. Smokers’ risk of heart disease is 2 to 4 times greater than nonsmokers. Exposure to “second hand smoke” also increases heart attack risk.
• Lower blood cholesterol and blood pressure.
• Control diabetes by keeping blood sugar levels as normal as possible
• Get some exercise – every day. Even moderate walking can help control blood sugar and cholesterol levels, blood pressure and weight.
• Manage stress
• Reduce alcohol drinking
• Lose weight if your relative is overweight

Schedule regular appointments with your parent’s doctor to monitor your parent’s heart health, check weight and blood pressure and determine if any additional medical or lifestyle changes should be made. A variety of medications are available to reduce the risk of future heart attacks.

HEART ATTACK – IT’S A FAMILY AFFAIR

Caregivers are important helping an older relative prevent heart attack and recognizing heart attack signs and symptoms so he or she receives prompt medical attention. Families can also encourage him or her make important lifestyle changes to help prevent future heart attacks. You’ll also find that many of these prevention strategies can also benefit your own health!

Stem cells not the only way to fix a broken heart

NewsRx.com

8/6/2009

Researchers appear to have a new way to fix a broken heart. They have devised a method to coax heart muscle cells into reentering the cell cycle, allowing the differentiated adult cells to divide and regenerate healthy heart tissue after a heart attack, according to studies in mice and rats reported in the July 24th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication. The key ingredient is a growth factor known as neuregulin1 (NRG1 for short), and the researchers suggest that the factor might one day be used to treat failing human hearts (see also Research).

"To my knowledge, this is the first regenerative therapy that may be applicable in a systemic way," said Bernhard Kuhn of Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School. For instance, he added, people might one day go to the clinic for daily infusions of NRG1 over a period of weeks. "In principle, there is nothing to preclude this going into the clinic. Based on the all the information we have, this is a promising candidate." He emphasized, however, that further studies would be required to demonstrate safety before such treatment could be tested in human patients.

The heart had long been considered an organ largely incapable of repairing itself. Heart muscle cells, also known as cardiomyocytes, do proliferate during prenatal development. Soon after birth, however, the cells become binucleated, meaning that they have two nuclei, and withdraw from the cell cycle, giving rise to the notion that adult cardiomyocytes are terminally differentiated and incapable of further proliferation.

However, recent evidence has shown that adult heart muscle cells can replace themselves at some low level, with perhaps half of the cells in the heart turning over in the course of a lifetime, Kuhn said. The new study provides multiple lines of evidence for this turnover ability - including video of the cells in action - and shows that neuregulin1 can ramp up the process.

In the current study, the researchers first tested the ability of various molecules to spur cell division in cultured cardiomyocytes. If cardiomyocytes are to reenter the cell cycle along the border zone of injury, the researchers surmised that there must be an extracellular signal that triggers the response, Kuhn explained.

They looked to several factors known to drive cardiomyocyte proliferation during prenatal development. Of those, NRG1 had the most significant effect, inducing the division of those cardiomyocytes with one nucleus instead of two.

By manipulating the NRG1 receptor up or down, the researchers showed they could increase or decrease cardiomyocyte proliferation in living animals. Moreover, injecting NRG1 in adult mice sparked cardiomyocyte cell-cycle activity and promoted the regeneration of heart muscle, leading to improved function after the animals suffered a heart attack. That regeneration could not be traced to undifferentiated progenitor cells, they report.

The researchers say they aren't sure whether NRG1 is responsible for the natural repair process, but their findings show that it clearly can enhance it. They also note that the NRG1 receptor and NRG1 itself are always present in the adult heart, though it is not clear if they are in the right place or in sufficient quantities.

"Collectively, we have identified the major elements of a new approach to promote myocardial regeneration," the researchers wrote." Many efforts and important advances have been made toward the goal of developing stem-cell based strategies to regenerate damaged tissues in the heart as well as in other organs. The work presented here suggests that stimulating differentiated cardiomyocytes to proliferate may be a viable alternative that could be developed into a simple strategy to promote myocardial regeneration in mammals."

Before making the leap to the clinic, Kuhn's group intends to further explore how the treatment works at the fundamental level. They will also characterize the regenerative response in pigs, which have more in common with humans than rodents do, before testing the approach in human patients. Ultimately, such a treatment might serve as a useful alternative or complement to treatments designed to seed damaged hearts with regenerative stem cells, Kuhn said.

Keywords: Cardiology, Cardiomyocyte, Heart Attack, Stem Cell Research, Therapy, Treatment.

This article was prepared by Hospital Business Week editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2009, Hospital Business Week via NewsRx.com.

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Mounting evidence of fish body oil benefit

United Press International

8/4/2009

NEW ORLEANS, Aug 4, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Omega-3 fatty acids may reduce the incidence of cardiac events and mortality in patients with existing heart disease, U.S. researchers said.

"We now have tremendous and compelling evidence from very large studies, some dating back 20 and 30 years, that demonstrate the protective benefits of omega-3 fish oil in multiple aspects of preventive cardiology," lead author Dr. Carl Lavie, medical director of Cardiac Rehabilitation and Prevention, Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans, said in a statement.

"The strongest evidence of a cardioprotective effect of omega-3s appears in patients with established cardiovascular disease and following a heart attack with up to a 30 percent reduction in cardiovascular-related death."

Dietary intake of fish oil can also decrease the risk of atherosclerosis, arrhythmias, heart attack, sudden cardiac death and even health failure, Lavie said.

The review, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, said based on the findings, the study authors recommend that healthy individuals should consume 500 mg daily of omega-3 fish oil containing docosahexaenoic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid and people with known heart disease or heart failure aim for at least 800 to 1,000 mg daily.

URL: www.upi.com