Nearly half of patients with a history of heart disease have poor knowledge about the symptoms of a heart attack and do not perceive themselves to have an elevated cardiovascular risk, according to a report in the May 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

A new calcium scoring method may better predict a person’s risk of heart attack, according to a new multicenter study published in the June issue of the journal Radiology. Calcium coverage scoring takes into account not only the amount of calcified plaque build-up in the coronary arteries, but also its distribution.

Study led by Gregg W. Stone, professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center/NewYork-Presbyterian and chairman of Cardiovascular Research Foundation, has shown that heart attack patients who were administered direct thrombin inhibitor bivalirudin during primary angioplasty had reduced rate of adverse clinical events, lower rate of major bleeding, and lower mortality rate than those who were treated with regimen of heparin and glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors (GPI).

Researchers at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, Fort Worth, Texas have demonstrated that, contrary to prevailing dogma, hypoxia can be remarkably beneficial to the heart. These discoveries, to be reported in the June 2008 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine, may lead to a new paradigm to protect hearts of patients at risk of coronary disease.

The Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF) announced today that the New England Journal of Medicine published results of the HORIZONS AMI trial which showed the use of the anticoagulant bivalirudin following angioplasty in heart attack patients reduced net adverse clinical events by 24 percent compared to the standard treatment, as well as reduced the risk of overall mortality by 33 percent and cardiac mortality by 38 percent.

A research study has found that a simple blood test may indicate whether post-menopausal hormone therapies present an elevated risk of a heart attack.

Long-term harmful effects of marijuana (MJ) include risk for heart attacks and strokes in addition to impaired learning and memory. The active chemical in MJ called delta-9-tetrahyrdocannabinol (THC) is believed to exert these effects by binding to cannabinoid (CB) receptors located on several cell types in various organs.

Research finds new way to predict heart attack risk. In fact, heart attack now can be heard by listening for a certain noise in the artery supplying blood to the brain.

The gender gap is alive and unwell in heart disease, a new international study finds, with women differing from men on everything from symptoms to treatment in both heart attack and severe chest pain.

Medical College of Wisconsin researchers in Milwaukee have shown for the first time that thrombopoietin (TPO), a naturally occurring protein being developed as a pharmaceutical to increase platelet count in cancer patients during chemotherapy, can also protect the heart against injury during a heart attack.

Chest pain still tops symptom list for both sexes, but women more likely to have atypical symptoms and 'invisible' blockages -- which may explain treatment lag

An analysis of studies involving the use of hemoglobin-based blood substitutes indicates their use is associated with an increased risk of death and heart attack, according to a JAMA study being released early online, and will appear in print in the May 21 issue of JAMA.