As presidential candidates ramp up their primary campaigns, health care reform looms prominently among voters main concerns. A new study in the December 26 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, provides the most comprehensive evidence to date that expanding coverage to people without it leads to demonstrable improvements in health........

A smoking-prevention strategy that targets black fourth-graders and their parents is under study in urban and rural Georgia. Scientists want to know if they can keep these children from smoking and help smoking parents quit, as per Dr. Martha S. Tingen, nurse researcher at the Medical College of Georgia's Georgia Prevention Institute, and Interim Program Leader for Cancer Prevention and Control, MCG Cancer Center........

Between 5% and 10% of men aged 65 to 79 have abdominal aortic aneurysms, but don't know it. If their weakened arteries burst they stand a very high risk of dying. Ultrasound screening of men in this age group can significantly reduce the numbers of men who die from this condition. The overall benefits of screening are complex, however, because a number of men may be subjected to unnecessary anxiety and/or to the complications of surgery........

New research suggests a genomic test may provide detailed information on how well a transplanted heart is performing. The gene expression profiling (GEP) test, known as the Allomapandreg; test, is currently used to detect the absence of heart transplant rejection instead of routine invasive heart muscle biopsies, but has now been shown to correlate with oxygen saturation levels, the pressure in the heart before pumping, and the electrical properties of the transplanted heart. These measures are crucial to understanding how well the transplanted heart is functioning........

Heart problems in children are quite different from those in adults, and four studies presented today at the American College of Cardiologys 56th Annual Scientific Session look at how pediatric heart specialists take different approaches to better understand and manage cardiovascular disease in this population, including insights into fundamental cardiac mechanisms and testing of new procedures. ACC.07 is the premier cardiovascular medical meeting, bringing together heart specialists and cardiovascular specialists to further breakthroughs in cardiovascular medicine........

The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health is among the first medical centers in the country taking part in a novel clinical trial investigating if a subject's own stem cells can treat a form of severe coronary artery disease. The trial, just underway at UW Hospital and Clinics, is enrolling subjects in the Autologous Cellular Therapy CD34-Chronic Myocardial Ischemia (ACT34-CMI) Trial. The first patient underwent the procedure March 7. Because the study is randomized and "double-blinded," however, neither the patient nor the research doctor knows if he received his own stem cells or a placebo substance........

Rush University Medical Center is one of the first medical centers in the country, and currently the only site in Illinois, participating in a novel clinical trial to determine if a subject's own stem cells can treat a form of severe coronary artery disease. The Autologous Cellular Therapy CD34-Chronic Myocardial Ischemia (ACT34-CMI) Trial is the first human, Phase II adult stem cell treatment study in the U.S. designed to investigate the efficacy, tolerability, and safety of blood-derived selected CD34+ stem cells to improve symptoms and clinical outcomes in subjects with chronic myocardial ischemia (CMI), a severe form of coronary artery disease........

It looks, contracts and responds almost like natural heart muscle - even though it was grown in the lab. And it brings researchers another step closer to the goal of creating replacement parts for damaged human hearts, or eventually growing an entirely new heart from just a spoonful of loose heart cells........

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. As per extensive evidence, the key driver for this increased risk of cardiovascular disease is the increased systemic inflammation characteristic of RA. Studies are less clear on whether medications that work to reduce RA's inflammatory symptoms provide protective benefits against cardiovascular events. Some data have suggested that the most potential biologic therapies, such as the TNF blockers, might reduce the risk of ischemic cardiovascular events........

Frequent bouts of depression, anxiety, hostility and anger are known to increase a person's risk for developing coronary heart disease, but a combination of these "negative" personality traits may put people at particularly serious risk, as per a research studyby scientists at Duke University Medical Center........

Doctors should probably stop using pulmonary artery catheters because they do not benefit patients, say doctors from Australia in this week's BMJ. The pulmonary artery catheter was invented in 1968. It enabled bedside monitoring in critically ill patients by measuring heart output and capillary pressure in the lungs and became widely used in intensive care units........

If he can figure out which babies will be born unable to breathe properly, Dr. Stephen M. Black thinks he can help change that. "When these kids are born, you have a short amount of time to intervene or you get brain damage," says Dr. Black, cell and molecular physiologist at the Medical College of Georgia Vascular Biology Center........

We all assume that older men are at a higher risk of heat disease and heart attacks compared to older women. It seems that we need to rethink this model. A surprising new study finds that women in their 60s have as a number of risk factors for heart disease as men, and by their 70s have more, as per research led by demographers at the University of Southern California........

Results of a new imaging study, supported in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institutes of Health, show that the nicotine received in just a few puffs of a cigarette can exert a force powerful enough to drive an individual to continue smoking. Scientists observed that the amount of nicotine contained in just one puff of a cigarette can occupy about 30 percent of the brain's most common type of nicotine receptors, while three puffs of a cigarette can occupy about 70 percent of these receptors. When nearly all of the receptors are occupied (as a result of smoking at least 2 and one-half cigarettes), the smoker becomes satiated, or satisfied, for a time. Soon, however, this level of satiation wears off, driving the smoker to continue smoking throughout the day to satisfy cigarette cravings........

Through studying pigeons with genetic heart disease, scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine have discovered a clue about why some patients' heart vessels are prone to close back up after angioplasty. "We identified a regulator of genes that controls the growth of artery smooth muscle cells," said William Wagner, Ph.D., senior researcher. "Learning to modulate the uncontrolled growth of these cells could potentially solve the problem of vessels re-closing after angioplasty"........