Heart Disease

Heart-disease deaths in the United States dropped 24 percent from 1980 to 1988, a sign that Americans are eating better, smoking less and receiving better treatment after heart attacks.Deaths from heart disease in people age 35 and over dropped from 588 per 100,000 people in 1980 to 448 per 100,000 people in 1988, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.The death rate declined faster for men than for women, and faster for whites than for African-Americans, the CDC said."It's clear that we're preventing the occurrence of heart attacks and lowering mortality," said Dr. Charles Hennekens, a professor of preventive medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Towson Town Center is hosting National Wear Red Day on Friday, Feb. 3, in conjunction with Go Red For Women, a program of the American Heart Association. The event is designed to increase awareness of the threat to women of heart disease and heart attacks. Shoppers are encouraged to wear red to Towson Town Center on Friday. During the day, they can also visit the Grand Court on level 1 between noon and 6 p.m. and have their picture taken, while explaining why they decided to "Go Red. " For each photo taken, Towson Town Center will donate $1 to Go Red for Women, up to $5,000.

Despite the attention we pay to cancer as a health problem, heart disease is the leading cause of death in women in the United States, killing more than 250,000 each year. This is more than all cancers combined.Between the ages of 45 and 64, one in nine women will have some form of heart disease, but for those over 65, the figure jumps to one in three.Why does the risk of heart disease increase so dramatically for women over 65?Heart disease increases with age, but in women hormone levels that drop after menopause may also contribute to an increased risk of heart disease.

WHAT DO YOU think you are going to die from? If you had to guess, what would you guess will kill you?If you are a woman, you almost certainly think you are going die from breast cancer. Sixty-six percent of you believe you will find a malignant lump and that it will kill you.Wrong."Almost half of all women will die of heart disease or stroke," says Martha Hill, president of the American Heart Association and a professor of nursing at Johns Hopkins University."And few will be lucky enough to die in their sleep without symptoms."

This is an edited excerpt of a Los Angeles Times editorial, which was published Monday.CARDIOVASCULAR disease has been the leading killer of Americans in every year but one in this century -- 1918, when a virulent influenza epidemic swept the world. But evidence grows that heart disease is to a large extent preventable or at least we are able to postpone its eventual onset by sticking to a prudent way of life.This is evident from the Nurses Health Study, which has been tracking female health professionals since 1980.

Scientists trying to understand why African-Americans are more likely than whites to die of heart disease may have hit upon a culprit -- a chemical that counteracts the body's clot-dissolving mechanism.Dr. James Roberts, a cardiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said yesterday that blacks appear genetically predisposed to generate higher levels of a blood component called lipoprotein-a that keeps clots from breaking apart.His remarks came yesterday during a conference on racial differences in heart disease sponsored by the Maryland chapter of the American Heart Association.

Q: I am a 56-year-old housewife and my doctor just told me that I have diabetes. One of my concerns is heart disease because my father was a diabetic and died of a heart attack despite great care in controlling his blood sugar. What can I do to reduce my likelihood of having a heart attack?A: You have good reason to be concerned about the development of heart disease. Coronary artery disease (CAD) is considerably more common among diabetics than among non-diabetics; the risk is particularly high in women with diabetes.

A cheap and painless set of tests developed in leading medical centers around the country promises to predict heart disease and stroke, and pinpoint the patients who really need aggressive therapy, far more accurately than do the traditional risk factors.The new method includes a simple measurement of the difference in blood pressure between arms and ankles, and a noninvasive acoustic test that measures narrowing of the carotid arteries that carry blood to the brain.Many patients with high cholesterol levels do not in fact develop heart disease.

Heart disease runs in my family. My maternal grandfather died in his 30s of a coronary, and my dad has had bypass surgery. He is now on several medications, most of which have dreadful side effects. Given this history, I am concerned about my own heart. I have heard that there is something new that is better than just a cholesterol test. Could you tell me more about this? The test is for C-reactive protein (CRP). This compound is a marker of inflammation and might be a better predictor of heart disease than standard cholesterol tests.

If medical tests were celebrities, the one that measures the C-reactive protein would be Angelina Jolie: very cool. In recent years, researchers have lauded the test's ability to find otherwise undetected heart disease. But a new study by a University of Maryland cardiologist casts doubt on CRP. The paper, in this week's Archives of Internal Medicine, found that CRP levels were closely tied to known risk factors for heart disease, such as smoking, obesity and hypertension. In other words, the test rarely tells doctors something new. "The reason you're likely to have high CRP is because you have these other risk factors too," said Dr. Michael Miller, the lead author.