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A new study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about three out of four Americans have hearts that are actually older than the rest of their bodies because of poor health and bad diets.
The heart age of the average U.S. male is almost eight years older than his real age. For women, it is more than five years.
The CDC says the most common reasons for an older heart include smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol, eating poorly and little exercise. It says an older heart could lead to heart attack or stroke.
Heart disease is the number one killer of Americans.
Report: Most Hearts in US Adults Older Than Real Age
Clinical trials with a stent that delivers drugs to arteries, helps them heal, and then dissolves showed it is as effective as a permanent metallic stent, according to the company developing the device. Researchers said a dissolving stent would allow an artery to fully function naturally and, if future treatment is needed, doctors would not be limited by the presence of a permanent implant. The dissolving stent, called the Absorb, is manufactured by Abbott, the same company that also makes a widely-used permanent stent called Xience. Both stents deliver drugs to arteries to help them heal. "Naturally dissolving heart stents are the next revolution in percutaneous coronary intervention, and Absorb is leading the way as an innovative option," said Dr. Dean Kereiakes, a professor of clinical medicine at Ohio State University, in a press release. "Absorb does its job and then restores the vessel to its natural state over time, which cannot be achieved with a permanent drug eluting stent."
Most stents placed in arteries are permanent metallic implants that deliver drugs to heal arteries and hold them open. The dissolving stent accomplishes the same goal, however after it heals the artery it dissipates, leaving two tiny metallic markers so that doctors know where it had been placed.
Researchers in the trial treated 1,322 coronary artery disease patients with Absorb and 686 patients with Xience. A similar number of patients experienced target lesion failure -- 7.8 percent of Absorb patients and 6.1 percent of Xience patients. There also was no great difference in patients who experienced cardiac death, myocardial infarction, and ischemia-driven target-lesion revascularization.
A trial in China showed similar results, as have other studies including more than 13,000 patients Abbott plans to present at the annual Transcatheter CarBdiovascular Therapeutics conference. Although Absorb is already in use in 100 countries, both the United States and China have yet to approve the stent for widespread use with patients. "Because Absorb leaves nothing behind it may provide significant long-term benefits, such as a restored vessel in a natural state and renewed possibilities for people treated with Absorb," said Dr. Charles Simonton, chief medical officer and divisional vice president for medical affairs at Abbott. The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Study: Dissolvable stent as good as conventional version
Although studies have shown obese and overweight people with cardiovascular disease, or CVD, outlive normal weight people with the disease, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have shown this isn't true when considering weight history and smoking status. The researchers say the new study disproves the obesity paradox, a theory suggesting obesity offers protection from certain chronic diseases.
Dr. Andrew Stokes, an assistant professor of global health at Boston University, said the paradox exists because research on it has generally only factored in weight at the time of a survey -- which he said in a press release "would be like classifying a lifelong smoker who quit the day before the survey as a non-smoker, even though we know that if you're a lifelong smoker you carry those risks over even if you stop smoking." "There's every reason to imagine that clinicians are at least confused," said Dr. Samuel Preston, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, "and in some cases, are believing that being overweight or obese is a good thing among people with cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other conditions for which a paradox has been demonstrated."
Researchers claim in the new study that the obesity paradox has existed as a theory because of biases in data analysis.
Stokes and Preston considered data for 30,400 people collected as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1988 and 2011. Of those survey participants, 3,388 had CVD. The researchers found that 64 percent of the people who were normal weight and been diagnosed with CVD had previously been overweight or obese. Including these individuals in the normal weight group deceptively showed that fewer obese people had died of CVD, the researchers wrote in the study, despite their conditions likely being influenced by extra weight they'd lost after developing CVD or other conditions.
The same was found to be true when considering for people who smoke, a group that overall is less likely to be obese. When the researchers limited the pool of participants to non-smokers, they reported the link between normal weight and CVD decreased as well. "It's conceivable that there are health advantages [to obesity]," Preston said. "But we show they are overwhelmed by the disadvantages of being obese, once you control for these two sources of bias." The study is published in the journal Obesity.
Obesity not beneficial for cardiovascular disease patients
