Fish oil pills don't boost benefit of heart drugs

From the Associated Press:
Heart attack patients who are already taking the right medicines to prevent future problems get no added benefit from taking fish oil capsules, a large study in Germany finds.

The study tested a 1-gram daily dose of a prescription version of highly purified omega-3 fatty acid — the "good fat" contained in certain oily fish that is thought to help the heart.

Researchers led by Dr. Jochen Senges of the University of Heidelberg gave fish oil or dummy capsules to more than 3,800 people who had suffered a heart attack in the previous two weeks. About 90 percent were already receiving all the medicines recommended to prevent a second attack, including aspirin, anti-clotting and cholesterol drugs.

After a year, it made no difference whether these patients took fish oil or dummy capsules. In both groups, fewer than 2 percent had suffered sudden cardiac death, 4 percent had another heart attack, and fewer than 2 percent had suffered a stroke.

If recent heart attack patients are already getting good care, "there is almost nothing you can do better on top of this" to further lower risk, Senges said. He presented the results Monday at an American College of Cardiology conference. ...more

'Polypill' could reduce heart disease, stroke: Researchers

This article mentions the polypill, but doesn't break down the ingredients. Here it is: atenolol 50mg, ramapril 5mg, ASA 100mg, simvastatin 20mg and hydrochlorothiazide 12.5mg.

From the Calgary Herald:
Canadian researchers say a single, daily pill combining five medicines could potentially cut by half the number of heart attacks and strokes in middle-aged people.

The pill — called Polycap — is a cocktail of three blood-pressure lowering drugs, Aspirin to reduce blood clotting and a cholesterol-lowering drug. In tests involving more than 2,000 people in India, each component of the pill did what it was supposed to do.

In addition, the Polycap was generally well tolerated. There was no evidence of increasing side effects with increasing number of active components in one pill.

The 12-week study wasn't designed to see whether the "polypill" actually reduced heart attacks, stroke and death. Larger numbers of people would need to be treated with a longer followup.

But the findings suggest the pill could potentially reduce cardiovascular heart disease by 62 per cent, and stroke by 48 per cent, researchers from McMaster University in Hamilton and St. John's Medical College in Bangalore, India write in the journal, The Lancet. The study is to be presented Tuesday at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Florida. ...more

Breakthrough study finds simple blood test may detect heart disease

From the Globe and Mail:
Measuring certain proteins through a simple blood test may make heart disease easier to detect and a lot less deadly, according to a study published online Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

People with healthy LDL-cholesterol levels but elevated levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive proteins experienced a nearly 50-per-cent reduction in the risk of heart attack, stroke, and cardiovascular death with a daily dose of a cholesterol-lowering statin drug, the study found.

The reduction in heart-disease risk among people who appear healthy and lack risk factors such as elevated cholesterol – which describes about half of those who experience heart disease – is such a significant finding that the drug trial was cut short in order to publish the results sooner.

The nearly 18,000 patients followed in the study had normal cholesterol levels and slightly elevated levels of C-reactive proteins – markers of inflammation that are known indicators of atherosclerosis, or blockage of the arteries.

The researchers suspected statin medications such as rosuvastatin would lower the risk of cardiovascular events in such patients, whose LDL-cholesterol levels were below 3.36 millimoles per litre, but were surprised by how well they worked. ...more

High fracture risk seen in heart failure patients

From the CBC News:
People with heart failure have an elevated risk for bone fractures, particularly a broken hip, and doctors should be on the lookout in these patients for signs of osteoporosis, Canadian researchers said Monday.

Among 16,294 patients with heart disease in Alberta, those treated for heart failure were four times as likely to have a fracture in the next year as those with other types of heart disease, the researchers report in the journal Circulation.

The heart failure patients were six times as likely as the others to sustain a hip fracture, the researchers added.

It was the first study to indicate heart failure patients are at greater risk for bone-weakening osteoporosis, said Dr. Justin Ezekowitz, director of the Heart Function Clinic at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, who helped lead the research.

"This intersection is important because orthopedic fracture, especially hip fracture, is very debilitating. On top of a very debilitating disease such as heart failure, this is a very big problem," Ezekowitz said in a telephone interview. ...more

Drugs, angioplasty give similar life quality: study

From Reuters:
Using drugs alone may take longer than angioplasty or stent surgery to help restore blood flow in patients with clogged arteries but in the long run patients do just about as well, researchers reported on Wednesday.

The surgery, known as PCI for percutaneous coronary intervention, may provide more short-term relief for some patients with severe or more frequent chest pain but the benefits tend to fade over the years, the international team of researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

They assessed 2,287 volunteers in 50 U.S. and Canadian medical centers as part of a study called COURAGE, for Clinical Outcomes Utilizing Revascularization and Aggressive Drug Evaluation.

They reported last year that patients getting drugs alone for chest pain known as angina and for heart disease are no more likely to die or have a heart attack during the follow-up period of 30 to 84 months than people who also received PCI. ...more

Heart attack patients who skip medication at high risk, study says

From CBC News:
Thirty per cent of heart attack patients who neglect to fill any of the prescribed medications for their condition may be dying within a year, a new Canadian study estimates.

According to researchers at Ontario's Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, a failure to adhere to medications that protect the heart, such as aspirin, beta blockers, statins or ACE inhibitors, could have deadly effects.

The study found that heart attack patients who did not fill any of their prescriptions had an 80 per cent higher chance of dying in the year following their heart attacks versus those who filled all of their prescriptions.

Those patients who filled some of their prescriptions but not others had a 40 per cent higher chance of dying in their first year versus those who filled all of them. ...more