heart disease

Heart study uses mobile tech to try to enroll 1M participants

If researchers at the University of California at San Francisco have their way, their new heart disease study won't suffer from a small sample size. Using online and mobile phone tools, they hope to get 1 million people from around the world to participate.

Launched this week, their Health eHeart Study (yes, very cute) enables participants to use their smartphones to frequently monitor heart rate, blood pressure, and pulse rate, and submit the resulting data via a secure online portal. The researchers, in turn, will use fancy algorithms to crunch that massive volume of data.

The goal? To use the super sample size to better understand -- and thus predict and prevent -- heart disease.… Read more

New MRI 'fingerprinting' could spot diseases in seconds

Our body tissue, not to mention diseases, each have their own unique "fingerprint," which can in turn be examined to diagnose various health issues at very early stages.

Now, researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland say that after a decade of work they've developed a new MRI (magnetic resonance imagining) technique that can scan for those diseases very quickly. In just 12 seconds, for instance, it may be possible to differentiate white from gray matter in cerebrospinal fluid in the brain; in a matter of minutes, a full-body scan would provide far more data, making diagnostics considerably easier and less expensive than today's scans.… Read more

NYU loses lab mice, years of medical research to Sandy

In the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, researchers are discovering the damage the done to one of New York University's research facilities and mourning the loss of lab animals and of scientific data that could take years to rebuild.

After the New York Daily News reported on Tuesday that flooding and power loss claimed the lives of thousands of lab mice as well as wiping out enzymes, antibodies, and DNA used in cancer and other research, the NYU Langone Medical Center confirmed in a statement released yesterday that its Smilow building was "adversely impacted" by the speed and severity of the flood surge.… Read more

Free iPad app guesses your risk for common diseases

When it comes to certain diseases -- think heart disease, diabetes, and various cancers -- some basic lifestyle changes are the best preventive medicine.

And while most of us know to eat a balanced diet, exercise, and abstain from smoking, it can be far more motivating to make healthy changes if we also know we're prone to certain diseases.

Enter Zuum, a free new iPad app that estimates your risk of common diseases and personalizes tips to prevent them and improve your overall health.… Read more

FDA clears robotic device to assist cardiologists

Radiation exposure is an occupational hazard for cardiologists performing a procedure called percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI -- better known as angioplasty), which helps restore blood flow to blocked arteries in patients with coronary artery disease. Lead aprons help, but they're not perfect, and they're heavy enough to take a toll.

Now a new system that employs robot-assisted stent and balloon placements to restore blood flow has received FDA clearance this week. Called CorPath 200, it allows cardiologists to work from inside a lead-lined cockpit, not only minimizing their radiation exposure but also improving their view of the angiography … Read more

Researchers trick the brain to lower blood pressure

Researchers have unveiled encouraging results of the first human randomized control trial of a procedure called therapeutic renal denervation to reduce and control hypertension in patients where medications aren't working. The announcement came at this week's Society of Interventional Radiology's 36th Annual Scientific Meeting in Chicago.

While the study involved only 106 adults and was funded by the manufacturer of the catheter and generator, the procedure--which uses a catheter-based probe to emit high-frequency energy directly into the renal artery to deactivate nerves linked to high blood pressure--does appear to be effective. That's particularly notable because these … Read more

New 'watch' measures central aortic systolic pressure

In what is being hailed by experts as a "scientific breakthrough" that could "revolutionize" the way blood pressure is measured, researchers in Singapore and the UK report in the current issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology on a novel device that can measure blood pressure near the heart.

The CASPro blood pressure monitor is named after central aortic systolic pressure (CASP), which is the pressure exerted by the aorta--the body's largest artery--that extends out from the heart. CASP is a key indicator of stroke and heart disease risk, and its measurements … Read more

Breakthrough heart scan leads to early diagnosis

Magnetometers are typically associated with large-scale projects such as digging for oil, locating submerged objects, and detecting archaeological sites from spacecraft. But now, with unprecedented sensitivity to magnetic fluctuations, a prototype being developed at the University of Leeds could greatly improve the diagnosis of cardiac conditions.

"The new system gets round previous difficulties by putting the actual detector in its own magnetic shield," says University of Leeds Professor Ben Varcoe, who is leading the research team.

Using a magnetometer to examine the cardiovascular health of humans has, up until now, been expensive and complicated, and has required containing … Read more