Battling Heart and Stroke

By Patsy Hamilton

Much of the latest published research reports on coronary heart disease focus on treatment and the use of statin drugs to lower LDL cholesterol levels. The coronary heart disease research studies mentioned here focus primarily on causes and the need for prevention education, rather than treatment.

A number of scientific studies have focused on the relationship between heart disease and type-2 diabetes mellitus, sometimes referred to as adult onset diabetes. Uncontrolled diabetes is a risk factor for developing heart disease. One recent study focused on the survival rate of patients with diabetes mellitus, who had already suffered one heart attack.

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By Eric Hartwell

Coronary Heart Disease is also known as atherosclerotic heart disease, coronary artery disease, and ischaemic heart disease. It comes about as the result of atheromatous plaques clogging the arteries that supply the heart’s muscle, which is known as the myocardium. The symptoms of coronary heart disease often do not reveal themselves until several decades after the fact, oftentimes in the result of a severe heart attack. After years of accumulation the plaques can rupture, and thus limit the amount of blood that flows to the heart muscle, resulting in the heart attack. Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of sudden death. For men and women of advanced age, it is the most common cause of death.

When it comes to heart disease, atherosclerotic heart disease entails a wide spectrum. At one end you have asymptomatic people whose disease is characterized by atheromatous streaks inside the walls of the coronary arteries. The streaks do not obstruct the blood flow, but rather represent the earliest stage of atherosclerotic heart disease. During this phase of the disease, a coronary angiogram may or may not show any signs that it is present. This is due to the fact that the coronary artery’s lumen has not decreased in caliber.

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