The Lancet has published a retraction of COOPERATE (Combination treatment of angiotensin-II receptor blocker and angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitor in non-diabetic renal disease) and reported that its lead author, Naoyuki Nakao, appears to have engaged in serious scientific misconduct.
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Monthly Archives: October 2009
Erosions and late-stage thrombi more prevalent in women and younger sudden death victims Reply
There may be important distinguishing features in the underlying substrate and thrombi in women and younger people who die suddenly from coronary disease, according to a new expedited publication in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Click to continue reading, including a commentary from PK Shah…
October thought experiment: suppose the World Series were covered like the Nobel Prize Reply
October brings the Nobel Prize announcements and the World Series. No one will mistake media coverage of one for the other. Each Nobel Prize will get one article and 10 seconds on the evening news. A soft feature will quote the new Nobel recipient’s complete surprise at the 4 AM phone call.
By contrast, baseball, like all major sports, is covered in great depth, by legions of sports reporters. Coverage is continuous during the long baseball season, reaches a near-hysterical peak in October, and continues generously even during the off-season.
Let’s try a thought experiment. Imagine for a moment that newspapers covered baseball the way they cover science. What would happen? What kind of articles would we see and what kind of stories would we miss?
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Elizabeth Taylor twitters the news she’s about to get an Evalve MitraClip mitral valve 2
Update–October 8: Elizabeth Taylor sent a tweet on Thursday announcing that her procedure had been a success. Here is the tweet: “Dear Friends, My heart procedure went off perfectly. It’s like having a brand new ticker. Thank you for your prayers and good wishes.”
Update–October 7: CardioBrief has heard from a reliable source that Taylor will undergo her procedure today.
Providing proof positive that we live in a world no one could possibly have imagined only a few short years ago, Elizabeth Taylor today twittered the news that she was about to enter the hospital and receive an Evalve MitraClip mitral valve clipping procedure.
CardioBrief has learned that Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is the only hospital in the Los Angeles area that is working with the Evalve device.
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9 nontraditional risk factors fail to gain USPSTF recommendations; CRP comes close Reply
Nine nontraditional risk factors have not been shown to improve risk stratification of people at intermediate risk for coronary heart disease, according to three new papers from the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) appearing in Annals of Internal Medicine. CRP came closest to receiving a recommendation. The authors found “moderate, consistent evidence that adding CRP to risk prediction models among initially intermediate-risk persons improves risk stratification” but did not find sufficient evidence “to assess whether reducing CRP levels prevents CHD events.”
Click to continue reading, including a comment from Sanjay Kaul…
Hypertension in China causes 1.27 million premature deaths a year Reply
Updated with a comment from Franz Messerli– Results of a large prospective cohort study suggest that in 2005 there were approximately 153 million people with hypertension in China, leading to 1.27 million premature deaths from cardiovascular disease. Not surprisingly, the authors argue that “prevention and control of this condition should receive top public-health priority in China.” The results have been published online in the Lancet.
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FDA posts full drug approval package for prasugrel 1
The FDA has posted the full drug approval package for prasugrel. The documents– many thousands of pages of correspondence, memos, reports, and reviews– provide an extremely detailed look at the approval process.
Click here for the FDA Drug Approval Package page for prasugrel.
Click here for a complete chronology of the prasugrel controversy.
Onglyza (saxagliptin) gains European approval; demonstrates noninferiority to sitagliptin in phase 3b trial Reply
Following FDA approval in the US earlier this year, Onglyza (saxagliptin) received European marketing authorization, according to a press release issued by Bristol-Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca.
According to the companies, Onglyza is indicated as a once-daily 5 mg oral tablet dose in adult patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus to improve glycemic control:
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First patient enrolled in study testing duration of antiplatelet therapy after DES Reply
Enrollment is finally underway in the much anticipated Dual Antiplatelet Therapy Study (DAPT), according to an announcement today from the Harvard Clinical Research Institute. DAPT is the product of a unique collaboration that includes the FDA, HCRI, and the following companies, which make stents and the antiplatelet drugs clopidogrel and prasugrel:
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Lancet review: will most babies born now live to 100? Reply
If current trends continue, most babies born in this century in developed countries will live to see their 100th birthday, according to an important new review appearing in the Lancet.
A key question is whether the increase in life expectancy will also bring an accompanying delay in functional limitations and disability. There is no clear answer to this question, but Kaare Christensen and coauthors find evidence suggesting that “people are living longer without severe disability.”
According to the authors, the increase in life expectancy shows no sing of deceleration: “The linear increase in record life expectancy for more than 165 years does not suggest a looming limit to human lifespan. If life expectancy were approaching a limit, some deceleration of progress would probably occur. Continued progress in the longest living populations suggests that we are not close to a limit, and further rise in life expectancy seems likely.” However, even if there are no further gains in health and life expectancy, three-fourths of babies born in this century will reach their 75th birthday.
Click to continue reading, including a comment from Harlan Krumholz…
FDA alert: heparin shipped after October 8 will be 10% less potent Reply
Heparin shipped after October 8 will be about 10% less potent, the FDA announced today. Partly in response to the heparin contamination scare last year, the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) has adopted new manufacturing controls that include a modification of the reference standard for the drug’s unit dose.
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