Science and Enterprise

Tag: heart disease

  • Lab-Made Heart Cells Found Useful for Research, Testing

    Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California have devised a process for generating artifical heart cells from the skin of patients with a common cardiac condition. Their findings appear today in the journal Science Translational Medicine (paid subscription required). The team led by Joseph Wu, a professor of cardiovascular medicine and of…

  • Degradable Stent Found Safe for Long Term Coronary Treatment

    Researchers in Japan and the Netherlands completed a 10-year study that found a stent that degrades and is absorbed into the blood vessel tissue to be safe for patients with coronary artery disease. The findings are published online ahead of print in the journal Circulation. Stents are mesh tubes inserted to prop open coronary arteries…

  • European Approval Granted for Temporary Heart Pump

    Abiomed Inc. in Danvers, Massachusetts, a developer of medical devices for circulatory support, says its Impella cVAD heart pump has received a CE mark indicating approval to market the device in EU member countries. The marking, an  acronym for the French Conformité Européenne, certifies that a product has met EU health, safety, and environmental requirements.…

  • Trial to Test Bacteria Elimination on Aspirin Tolerance

    A clinical trial led by University of Nottingham in the U.K. will test the effect of removing a common stomach bacteria on making aspirin safer for some patients. The Helicobacter Eradication Aspirin Trial (HEAT) will also involve academics from Durham, Southampton, Oxford, and Birmingham universities. The trial will investigate if removing the bacterium Helicobacter pylori…

  • Blood Biomarker Can Help Predict Imminent Heart Attack Risks

    Research conducted by Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California discovered a potential biomarker found in a patient’s blood that can help predict if that person is at imminent risk of a heart attack. The findings of Scripps’s Eric Topol and colleagues appear in this week’s issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine (paid subscription…

  • Injectable Gel Material Devised to Treat Heart Tissue Damage

    Engineers at University of California at San Diego have developed a gel-type material that in animal models shows promise in treating heart tissue damaged by a heart attack. The work of a team led by UCSD’s Karen Christman appears in the 21 February issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (paid subscription…

  • Stem Cells Repair Heart Muscle in Clinical Trial

    A clinical trial at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore has shown that treating patients with their own heart-derived stem cells helps re-grow healthy muscle damaged by a heart attack. The team led by Raj Makkar of Cedars-Sinai using technology developed by Eduardo Marbán (pictured right), director of…

  • Warfarin, Aspirin Provide Similar Stroke Prevention

    In a six-year, 11-country clinical trial, researchers at Columbia University found aspirin and the anti-clotting drug warfarin to offer about equal protection against death and strokes in heart failure patients with normal heart rhythms. The findings of the study led by Columbia medical school professor Shunichi Homma were presented at the International Stroke Conference in…

  • NIH Trials to Assess Emergency Cardiac Arrest Treatments

    NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has begun two clinical trials to evaluate treatments for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: – A comparison of continuous chest compressions (CCC) combined with pause-free rescue breathing, to standard cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) that includes a combination of chest compressions and pauses for rescue breathing, and – Treatment with the drug…

  • FDA Approves Cardiac Device for Children Awaiting Transplant

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday approved the Excor Pediatric System, a device to support children with heart failure until a donor for a heart transplant can be found. The device is made by Berlin Heart GmbH in Germany and The Woodlands, Texas. The Excor Pediatric System is an external heart pump…