Monthly Archives: November 2010

The Gene of Damocles — Assessing Heart Disease Risk

Sword of DamoclesA study from the Mayo Clinic presented at this week’s American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Chicago caught my eye. Researchers looked at the medical records of 1,262 people who had no history of heart disease. Using the standard Framingham Risk Score (FRS) which factors in age, sex, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, diabetes and smoking status, they calculated the ten-year probability of heart attack.

They then performed genetic tests on these patients’ existing blood samples to find if any of 11 genetic variants were present. Called single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) these variants have been found to be potential risk factors for heart attack. Continue reading

Leave a Comment

Filed under Clinical Trials / Studies, Compliance, Heart Attack, Meetings & Conferences, Risk Factors

Did I (Cough!) Say ACE Inhibitors? (Cough! Cough!)

Vasotec - ACE InhibitorA study in the current issue of The American Journal of Medicine confirms what we’ve been telling heart patients on Angioplasty.Org’s Patient Forum for a while now: a well-known side effect of ACE inhibitors is a dry cough. The provocatively-titled study is “Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitor Associated Cough: Deceptive Information from the Physicians’ Desk Reference“.

It is a provocative article because of the word “deceptive” in the title: the word indicates that patients and physicians are not being adequately informed about the incidence of a side effect of ACE inhibitors: the cough. And is that ever the case! Continue reading

Leave a Comment

Filed under Clinical Trials / Studies, Optimal Medical Therapy, Patient Alert, Patient Experience, Patients

Visit the Archive for all of Burt’s Postings

Burt Cohen, The Voice In The Ear

Visit the archive for all of Burt’s postings.

Nov 2010 is as far back into our blog’s history as we’ve imported the “Voice In The Ear” archives to this current format, where they are tagged by topic.

We invite you to browse the archive to read all Burt’s earlier posts, back to the blog’s start in Oct 2004.  Happy reading!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Web Site