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The last decade saw middle-income countries enjoying improved access to cardiovascular medications, but they remain far from closing the considerable gap with richer countries.
Cardiovascular drug sales grew about 10 times faster from 2008 to 2018 in middle-income countries than in high-income countries (annual growth rate 9.96% vs 0.98%), according to a large pharmaceutical sales database probed by Esther Chan, PhD, of the University of Hong Kong, and colleagues.
As a result, the 15-fold gap in total cardiovascular medicine sales between the two country types in 2008 (27.69 vs 410.54 defined daily doses per 1,000 inhabitants per day) shrank to a six-fold gap in 2018 (71.57 vs 452.52 defined daily doses per 1,000 inhabitants per day), reported Chan s group in the February 23 issue of the
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Links between cardiovascular disease and cognitive decline may begin in midlife before the first clinical symptoms of either condition appear, cross-sectional data from a cohort study suggested.
Middle-age cardiovascular risk largely driven by hypertension was associated with brain hypometabolism, an imaging marker of neurodegeneration, according to Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, of Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) in Madrid, Spain, and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, and colleagues.
Subclinical carotid plaque burden also was tied to reduced brain metabolism independent of diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and smoking, they reported in the When brain metabolism declines, the brain s ability to handle adverse events can be compromised. Depending on the brain area affected, this can lead to a range of distinct problems, co-author Marta Cortes-Canteli, PhD, also of CNIC, said in a statement.
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Kids born to mothers with good cardiovascular health during pregnancy were more likely to have better heart health later on, according to a multinational cohort study.
Children born to mothers with a lower total cardiovascular health (CVH) score calculated with metrics including body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, cholesterol levels, glucose levels, and a history of smoking had an increased risk of poor cardiovascular health themselves, reported Amanda Perak, MD, MS, of the Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues.
Each additional poor metric measured in pregnant women was associated with a dose-dependent, increased risk of worse cardiovascular health in their kids, the researchers noted in
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High-intensity interval training (HIIT) did not beat traditional exercise in raising exercise capacity for sedentary patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), according to the OptimEx-Clin trial.
HIIT and moderate continuous training groups yielded similar improvements in peak oxygen consumption (VO
2) from baseline to 3 months (+1.1 vs +1.6 mL/kg/min) both too modest to meet a prespecified minimal clinically-important threshold in comparison with controls (-0.6 mL/kg/min).
Neither HIIT nor traditional exercise remained associated with improved exercise capacity at 12 months compared with controls, who got no supervised exercise training, only guideline-directed advice on physical activity, reported Martin Halle, MD, of the Technical University of Munich, Germany, and colleagues online in
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Registry data reaffirmed extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) as a reasonable strategy for COVID-19 patients with severe respiratory problems, with most survivors discharged home and several going on to receive lung transplants.
Survival outcomes were outlined for 189 consecutive COVID-19 patients who had received ECMO support at 20 institutions at the time of the analysis:
98 died on ECMO or within 24 hours of decannulation
12 survived their ECMO run but died more than a day later in the hospital
Nine are alive and remain in the hospital
70 were discharged alive from the hospital Our experience and analysis of 189 consecutive patients at 20 hospitals reveal that ECMO facilitates salvage and survival of select critically ill patients with COVID-19, stated Jeffrey Jacobs, MD, of University of Florida in Gainesville, during the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) virtual meeting.