Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine created the Health ABC Heart Failure Model for predicting risk of new onset heart failure in the elderly. Now that model has been strengthened by validating it in a separate library of patient data from an earlier cardiovascular study.

Heart failure is reaching epidemic levels among seniors in the United States, according to research presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2008.

Heart specialists at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere report what is believed to be the first wide-scale evidence linking severe overweight to prolonged inflammation of heart tissue and the subsequent damage leading to failure of the body’s blood-pumping organ.

Conventional wisdom holds that as the U.S. population ages, the incidence of heart failure will continue to rise. A new study from Duke University Medical Center challenges part of that assumption, however, finding that heart failure is actually declining among the very elderly.

Men who consume a higher amount of whole grain breakfast cereals may have a reduced risk of heart failure, according to a report in the October 22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Drugs that are agonists of the receptor PPAR-gamma are used to treat individuals with diabetes. However, it has been suggested that their use is associated with a slightly increased risk of heart failure.

Changes in the size, shape, and function of the heart (cardiac remodeling) contribute to the onset and progression of heart failure.

Despite the popular notion that antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, offer health-promoting benefits by protecting against damaging free radicals, a new study in the August 10 issue of the journal Cell reveals that, in fact, balance is the key. The researchers show in mice that an overload of natural antioxidants can actually lead the heart to failure.

A potential new biomarker for heart failure may be more powerful than established measures in identifying patients at increased risk for death from several causes.

A class of drugs commonly used to treat type 2 diabetes may double the risk of heart failure, according to a new analysis by researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues.

A simple exercise test may help predict mortality risk in patients with heart failure and help doctors to better tailor treatment strategies, according to new research from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

Statin drugs, known primarily for their ability to lower cholesterol, also may reduce the overactive sympathetic nervous system response that contributes to the worsening of heart failure and increases the risk of sudden cardiac death, two University of Missouri-Columbia researchers have found. Heart failure is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States.