Low arsenic levels not tied to high blood pressure
• Severe Hypertension News • Jan 18 11
While arsenic in water and food is a health concern, a new study suggests the levels found in most Americans are too low to…    

Antibiotics, blood pressure drugs can be risky mix
• Severe Hypertension News • Jan 18 11
Older adults on blood pressure drugs known as calcium channel blockers could suffer dangerous drops in blood pressure if they are given certain antibiotics,…    

Bioactive compounds in berries can reduce high blood pressure
• Severe Hypertension News • Jan 14 11
Eating blueberries can guard against high blood pressure, according to new research by the University of East Anglia and Harvard University.

High blood pressure ??“ or hypertension ??“ is one of the major cardiovascular diseases worldwide. It leads to stroke and heart disease and costs more than $300 billion each year. Around a quarter of the adult population is affected globally ??“ including 10 million people in the UK and one in three US adults.

Published next month in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the new findings show that bioactive compounds in blueberries called anthocyanins offer protection against hypertension. Compared with those who do not eat blueberries, those eating at least one serving a week reduce their risk of developing the condition by 10 per cent.
   

Groundhogs Are Right 39 Percent of the Time; Winter Requires Extra Care for Humans with Hipertension
• Severe Hypertension News • Jan 12 11
Groundhogs Are Right 39 Percent of the Time; Winter Requires Extra Care for Humans with High Blood Pressure

It??™s sad but true. Celebrity groundhog Punxsutawney Phil of PA and his relatives accurately predict the end or extension of winter only 39 percent of the time according to the United States National Climate Center.

Still, Groundhog Day remains a beloved national pastime.

In the northern states, winter often barrels past February 2 and continues through April Fool??™s Day. Surviving long, cold winters requires extra care for the 100 million Americans who have high blood pressure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that almost one in three Americans have high blood pressure.     

Alzheimer’s study finds HDL good for brain, too
• Severe Hypertension News • Dec 14 10
In addition to being good for the heart, high levels of so-called “good” cholesterol may protect against Alzheimer’s disease, U.S. researchers said on Monday.…    

Home monitors can aid blood pressure control
• Severe Hypertension News • Dec 13 10
Home blood pressure monitors can help people keep their blood pressure in check and possibly cut down on medication—as long as the patients and…    

Limiting Salt Lowers Blood Pressure and Health Risks in Diabetes
• Severe Hypertension News • Dec 08 10
For patients living with diabetes, reducing the amount of salt in their daily diet is key to warding off serious threats to their health,…    

Chronic high cholesterol diet produces brain damage
• Severe Hypertension News • Nov 24 10
Research from the Laboratory of Psychiatry and Experimental Alzheimers Research (http://www2.i-med.ac.at/psychlab/) at the Medical University Innsbruck (Austria) demonstrated that chronic high fat cholesterol…    

Easy on the Salt!
• Severe Hypertension News • Nov 24 10
There can be far more salt in many holiday meals than people realize, and the proof can be found at hospital emergency rooms. Heart…    

Gene linked to worsening kidney disease in African-Americans
• Severe Hypertension News • Nov 22 10
In African Americans with kidney disease related to hypertension (high blood pressure), a common gene variant is associated with a sharply increased risk of progressive kidney disease, according to a study presented at the American Society of Nephrology’s 43rd Annual Meeting and Scientific Exposition. End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) associated with hypertension occurs in the African American population at a rate 13.1 times greater than that of their white counterparts.

“We found that individuals with the common genotype were approximately 1.5 times more likely to have progressive kidney disease than those with other genotypes,” comments Brad C. Astor, PhD (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore). The variant gene??”found in more than half of patients in the study??”could contribute to the high rate of ESRD among African Americans.

The researchers performed genetic studies to identify variant forms of the gene MYH9 in 706 African Americans with kidney disease related to high blood pressure (hypertensive nephrosclerosis). The patients were drawn from a larger study, the African American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension (AASK).    

Statin Therapy May be Overprescribed in Healthy People without Evidence of Diseased Arteries
• Severe Hypertension News • Nov 17 10
Rolling back suggestions from previous studies, a Johns Hopkins study of 950 healthy men and women has shown that taking daily doses of a cholesterol-lowering statin medication to protect coronary arteries and ward off heart attack or stroke may not be needed for everyone.

In a study to be presented Nov. 16 at the American Heart Association??™s (AHA) annual Scientific Sessions in Chicago, the Johns Hopkins team found that nearly 95 percent of all heart attacks, strokes or heart-related deaths occurred in the half of study participants with some measureable buildup of artery-hardening calcium in the blood vessels; hence, only this subgroup might have benefited from preventive drug therapy. Seventy-five percent of all heart emergencies occurred in the quarter with the highest calcium scores.

The 47 percent of study participants with no detectable levels of calcium buildup in their blood vessels suffered about 5 percent of heart-disease related events during the six-year study, meaning that drug therapy may not have offered any coronary protection.    

MRI Scans Show Structural Brain Changes in People at Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease
• Severe Hypertension News • Nov 17 10
New results from a study by neuroscientists at Rush University Medical Center suggest that people at risk of developing Alzheimer??™s disease exhibit a specific structural change in the brain that can be visualized by brain imaging. The findings may help identify those who would most benefit from early intervention.

The study will be presented at Neuroscience 2010, the annual meeting for the Society of Neuroscience in San Diego, Calif., on Wednesday, November 17.

???One of the main challenges in the field of Alzheimer??™s disease is identifying individuals at risk of developing Alzheimer??™s disease so that therapeutic interventions developed in the future can be given at the earliest stage before symptoms begin to appear,??? said Sarah George, a graduate student who co-authored the study with Leyla deToledo-Morrell, PhD, director of the graduate program in neuroscience at Rush University Medical Center and professor of neurological sciences at the Graduate College of Rush University.     

No salt-added items make big difference
• Severe Hypertension News • Nov 01 10
If you are one of the 65 million adults in this country with high blood pressure, it’s time to make a DASH to a…    

Hypertension news: Phosphorus may help cut high blood pressure risk
• Severe Hypertension News • Nov 01 10
There was no significant change in the prevalence of high blood pressure or hypertension among adults from 1999-2000 to 2007-2008, according to a report released in Oct. by Sung Sug (Sarah) Yoon and colleagues at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention??™s National Center for Health Statistics, Division of Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys.

The report says however that more people or 88.6 percent of adults in 2007 - 2008 became awareness of their high blood pressure status, compared to 69.6 percent in 1999-2000.  And more people were taking anti-hypertension medications.

High blood pressure is related to lifestyle factors including a person’s dietary habit.    

Barbershop Interventions Reduce Hypertension Rates in Black Men
• Severe Hypertension News • Nov 01 10
In an effort to reduce the high hypertension rates that plague black men in the U.S., many interesting approaches have been applied.  Blood pressure…    

Haircuts and hypertension
• Severe Hypertension News • Nov 01 10
Barbershops can help shave the high rates of high blood pressure among African American men, a new study suggests.

More than 40…    

Barbershop-based BP monitoring improved hypertension control rate
• Severe Hypertension News • Nov 01 10
Hypertensive male barbershop patrons whose barbers offered BP screenings and physician referrals at the time of their haircut exhibited better hypertension control rates than…    

Recommendations for Managing Hypertension in Blacks Released
• Severe Hypertension News • Nov 01 10
Through the publication of its Consensus Statement on the Management of High Blood Pressure in Blacks in this week??™s issue of Hypertension, ISHIB today released new recommendations recognizing that high blood pressure among African Americans is a severe health problem. The consensus statement suggests that treatment should start sooner and be more aggressive among African Americans.

The recommended hypertension management strategies, also recognized by the American Society on Hypertension, will assist physicians in ensuring optimal treatment for African Americans with, or at-risk of, high blood pressure.

After an extensive review of the most recent studies and other guidelines on the hypertension, the ISHIB writing group, led by John M. Flack, MD, MPH developed a step-by-step guide for risk-stratification, selecting blood pressure targets, and choosing drug treatments to reach these targets.    

High blood pressure remains at 30 percent
• Severe Hypertension News • Oct 28 10
High-blood pressure among U.S. adults has remained stable 1999-2008, but more people are aware of hypertension and treat it, health officials say.

…    

High blood pressure awareness, treatment improve
• Severe Hypertension News • Oct 28 10
More American adults are aware they have high blood pressure, and more are taking medicine to try to control it, according to a new government report released Wednesday.

Yet the proportion of U.S. adults with high blood pressure has actually been holding steady at about 30% for a decade, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report found.

That finding may surprise some, given escalating hand-wringing by health officials about problems that can contribute to high blood pressure ??” such as obesity and salt intake.    

Benefit of exercise in patients with hypertension has been insufficiently investigated
• Severe Hypertension News • Oct 27 10
There are many good reasons to ensure sufficient exercise in everyday life. However, advising patients with increased blood pressure (hypertension) to exercise regularly is…    

Barber-based intervention may help black men better control high blood pressure
• Severe Hypertension News • Oct 26 10
Black men who are offered a blood pressure check while at the barbershop appear more likely to improve control of hypertension, according to a…    

Quebec City researchers pave the way for novel treatment of pulmonary hypertension
• Severe Hypertension News • Oct 24 10
A Heart and Stroke Foundation researcher has discovered what could be the first truly effective breakthrough in the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary hypertension, a devastating, life-threatening condition which results in an enlargement of the heart.

“We have discovered an early warning system in a protein called PIM-1,” Dr. S?©bastien Bonnet told the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress 2010, co-hosted by the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society.

Dr. Bonnet has established that the PIM-1 cells can be used as markers of pulmonary hypertension.     

High Blood Pressure May Take Greater Toll on Youngest Black Children’s Hearts
• Severe Hypertension News • Oct 18 10
Persistently high blood pressure, or hypertension, may spell worse heart trouble for black children under the age of 13 than for other children of the same ages, according to research led by scientists at Johns Hopkins Children??™s Center and published in the November issue of Pediatrics.

The study analyzed data from 184 children and young adults, 45 of them black, ages 3 to 20, treated at three hospitals for primary hypertension.

Black children were, overall, more prone to left-ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), a dangerous thickening of the heart muscle, one of hypertension??™s earliest, most insidious and most common complications, and the difference was particularly pronounced in those younger than 13 years of age, the researchers report.     

West Virginia school-based screening reveals significant high blood pressure rate
• Severe Hypertension News • Oct 14 10
It’s not easy to wrangle fifth graders from noisy school hallways to get their blood pressure checked. But with an age-adjusted death rate due…    

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