Cardiovascular Conditions

Listen to article(2 minutes)Should your granola bar come with a warning label?Concern is rising about the amount of ultra-processed foods in American diets, and the effect eating so many of those foods has on our health. Part of the problem, nutrition researchers say, is that lots of healthy-seeming items—many breakfast cereals, soups and yogurts as well as granola—fall into that category. Recent studies have linked diets high in ultra-processed foods to increased risks of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular…

New options are emerging for people who are at risk of heart attacks and strokes but can’t take or benefit fully from widely used cholesterol drugs.Despite decades of progress against high cholesterol, as many as 30% of people prescribed the popular cholesterol-lowering pills known as statins don’t take them or have to limit their doses because they can’t tolerate the muscle pain that sometimes comes as a side effect. Others remain at risk of cardiovascular disease even when they are on full doses.  The failure to fully…

A Medtronic PLC medical device reduced the blood pressure of people with tough-to-treat hypertension in a closely watched study, but not significantly beyond what medications achieved.The device cut a crucial measure of blood pressure by only about two points more than the average reduction in study volunteers who didn’t get the procedure, researchers said Monday. Despite falling short of the study’s main efficacy goal, Medtronic said it has completed its application to the Food and Drug…

The health-products company will face challenges meeting ambitious growth targets for the new business, however, and ongoing clinical trials aren’t certain to produce results that will lead to wider use of Abiomed’s devices that J&J is counting on, analysts say. J&J’s medical-device business, which sells artificial knees and contact lenses, has had largely sluggish growth for several years, especially relative to its pharmaceutical unit. Turning around the medical-device unit is taking on more…

Just because your smartwatch can tell you if you have an irregular heart rhythm, does that mean the information will do you any good?Many new smartwatches, including those from Apple, have sensors that can pick up on an irregular pulse and notify wearers that they may be in atrial fibrillation, or AFib. The devices are hitting the market at a time when consumers are gaining interest in tracking aspects of their health beyond fitness.…

A new heart valve repair device from Edwards Lifesciences Corp. was as effective as the market-leading device from Abbott Laboratories in a clinical study of heart-disease patients, a finding likely to intensify competition in a growing device market.Edwards said Thursday that its new product, known as Pascal Precision, had been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of a disease called degenerative mitral regurgitation. It will be…

The once lucrative heart-drug market is now poised to make a comeback, but at the cost of heavy investments in research and deal making.After watching lower-priced generics seize sales of once-highflying blood-pressure, cholesterol and other heart drugs, companies struggled to discover replacements and then win reimbursement for five-figure prices. Drugmakers are now rolling out new medicines, though their commercial prospects are uncertain. Novartis AG recently launched a new…

Two brain-dead individuals received genetically modified pig-heart transplants, part of growing efforts by scientists who want to improve tests on pig organs for pig viruses and gather data that could help launch clinical trials of animal-to-human organ transplants.Scientists at NYU Langone Health, where the research studies took place in June and July, said the pig hearts were flown from a facility hundreds of miles away and then transplanted into two recently deceased individuals, Lawrence Kelly, 72, a former welder…