April 13th, 2013
FDA Schedules Another 2-Day Avandia Advisory Panel
Larry Husten, PHD
Once again the controversial diabetes drug rosiglitazone (Avandia, GlaxoSmithKline) will be the subject of a 2-day FDA hearing. According to a meeting announcement scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on April 15, the Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee and the Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee will meet on June 5 and June 6 to “discuss the results […]
April 11th, 2013
Cuban History Offers Important Lessons For Global Health Today
Larry Husten, PHD
A large new study from Cuba shows the impressive benefits that can be achieved with weight loss and increased exercise. Much more ominously, the same study shows the dangers associated with weight gain and less exercise. In the study, published in BMJ, researchers took advantage of a “natural” experiment that occurred in Cuba as a result of a […]
April 11th, 2013
Treatment of Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction: Why Have All the Clinical Trials Failed, and What Can We Do About It?
Sanjiv Shah, MD and John Ryan, MD
Laying out a road map for better trials and ultimately better outcomes for this confounding condition
April 11th, 2013
Bleeding Avoidance Strategies for PCI in Women vs. Men
Stacie Luther Daugherty, MD, MSPH and John Ryan, MD
John Ryan interviews Stacie Daugherty, lead author of a study recently published online by JACC on differences in rates of bleeding and bleeding avoidance strategies (BAS) between women and men undergoing PCI. THE STUDY Investigators used data from the CathPCI registry to analyze the use of BAS (radial access, bivalirudin, vascular closure devices, or any […]
April 11th, 2013
Journals, Journals, Everywhere
Tariq Ahmad, MD, MPH
Does creating more subspecialty journals contribute to the creation of too much information, about small aspects of the field, such that specialists move closer to “knowing everything about nothing”?
April 10th, 2013
Scientific Misconduct: From Darwin and Mendel to Poldermans and Matsubara
Larry Husten, PHD
Responding to recent episodes of scientific misconduct in cardiovascular research involving once prominent cardiovascular researchers, the editor of the European Heart Journal, Thomas Lüscher, has written an editorial discussing the significance of the new cases and placing them in a historical context that includes allegations of scientific misconduct by Mendel and Darwin, among many others. Lüscher writes that scientific […]
April 9th, 2013
Quinidine Unavailable in Most of the World
Larry Husten, PHD
Quinidine — the only drug known to be effective in preventing lethal ventricular arrhythmias in people with several rare conditions, including Brugada syndrome, idiopathic ventricular fibrillation (VF), and early repolarization syndrome — is no longer available in much of the world. In a study published online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Sami Viskin and colleagues […]
April 9th, 2013
The TACT Investigators Respond to Questions
Gervasio Antonio Lamas, MD, Daniel Mark, Christine Goertz, DC, PhD, Robin Boineau, M.D., M.A., Kerry L. Lee, Ph.D. and Harlan M. Krumholz, MD, SM
The publication in JAMA of the NIH’s Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) has reignited a heated debate about the trial. The TACT investigators have generously agreed to respond to questions posed by Harlan Krumholz.
April 8th, 2013
Selections from Richard Lehman’s Literature Review: April 8th
Richard Lehman, BM, BCh, MRCGP
This week’s topics include an article on open science through data sharing, primary prevention of CVD with a Mediterranean diet, atherosclerosis found in mummies, and more.
April 7th, 2013
Researchers Find New Pathway Linking Heart Disease To Carnitine
Larry Husten, PHD
A new line of preliminary research has turned up a novel pathway linking atherosclerosis to red meat and a common supplement contained in energy drinks. If the research is upheld, the findings may have important implications for dietary recommendations and our understanding of atherosclerosis. The research also provides another quite surprising example of the previously […]