Maternal, childhood factors affect obesity risk

Reviver submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (www.reutershealth.com)

New research hints, factors ranging from her mother's body mass index to her own weight gain in early childhood influence the likelihood that a female child will grow up to become overweight.

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Medicare will not cover stents for neck arteries

Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (www.nytimes.com)

Heart stents made the news recently, but this article discusses stents that are placed in neck arteries to prevent stroke. The issue isn't whether or not they work but who will pay for them.

Dr. Barry T. Katzen, director of the Baptist Cardiac and Vascular Institute in Miami, says that this will actually help research: By linking their willingness to pay to the efficacy of clinical trials, he says, they will influence doctors to be more stringent with those trials.

He sure sounds as though he's making the best of it. Thoughts?

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Predictors of stroke in high-risk patients after acute myocardial infarction: insights from the VALIANT trial

medal submitted, created time 1 year 9 months (eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org)

"Among high-risk patients presenting with MI but without initial neurological symptoms, the risk of stroke 6 weeks thereafter is 0.94% (95% CI 0.78–1.09). Of the most powerful baseline predictors of stroke, DBP and AF are amenable to therapeutic interventions and thus merit special attention in these patients"

Submit comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: Acute coronary syndromes Acute myocardial infarction Acute cerebral haemorrhage Acute cerebral infarction Embolic stroke Risk factors for stroke