There's been a breakthrough in the case of the missing planets. While planet-hunting missions have discovered thousands of worlds orbiting distant stars, there's a severe scarcity of exoplanets that measure between 1.5 and two times Earth's radius. That's the middle ground between rocky super-Earths and larger, gas-shrouded planets called mini-Neptunes. Since discovering this 'radius gap' in 2017, scientists have been sleuthing out why there are so few midsize heavenly bodies. The new clue arose from a fresh way of looking at the data. A team of researchers led by the Flatiron Institute's Trevor David investigated whether the radius gap changes as planets age. They divvied up exoplanets into two groups -- young and old -- and reassessed the gap. The ...

The blood thinner apixaban was not superior to standard of care following transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), according to findings from a new trial called ATLANTIS presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. Researchers found that while apixaban reduced the formation of blood clots (thrombosis) around the implanted valve with no increased bleeding risk, a subset of patients taking apixaban who did not have an indication for anticoagulation apart from the TAVR procedure showed a tendency toward a higher rate of non-cardiovascular death--a ...

Transcatheter left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) with a WATCHMAN device was associated with a low rate of stroke at one year even among older patients with atrial fibrillation (AFib) who faced a high risk for stroke or bleeding based on their previous health history, according to new data presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. The WATCHMAN device, which blocks a small portion of the heart to help reduce the risk of a dangerous clot forming, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2015. The device is used to reduce the risk of stroke in patients with AFib, a heart rhythm disorder, that is not caused by problems with the heart valve. ...

Patients with an elevated risk of stroke due to heart rhythm problems, or atrial fibrillation (AFib), were much less likely to suffer a stroke after undergoing heart surgery if doctors concurrently performed an additional procedure, called left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO), according to the results of a trial presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. AFib increases a person's risk of stroke or systemic embolism, which are life-threatening conditions caused by blood clots blocking an artery. It has been hypothesized that the blood clots that cause these conditions often originate in the left atrial appendage, a small sac on the upper left chamber of the heart. LAAO is a procedure to ...

The heart failure drug sacubitril/valsartan did not significantly reduce the rate of heart failure or cardiovascular death following a heart attack compared to ramipril, an angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor proven effective in improving survival following heart attacks. Findings from the PARADISE-MI trial were presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. The study is the first large trial to examine whether sacubitril/valsartan can reduce heart failure and associated hospitalizations and deaths in patients post-heart attack who face a high risk of developing heart failure. Patients taking sacubitril/valsartan were about 10% less likely than those ...

Researchers found no significant differences in cardiovascular events or major bleeding in patients with pre-existing cardiovascular disease who were taking 81 milligrams (mg), also called baby aspirin, versus 325 mg of daily aspirin, according to new data presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. Aspirin is the most common medication for people with established cardiovascular disease--for example, those who have had a heart attack, a stent placed or bypass surgery--to help prevent another heart attack, stroke or premature death. But despite aspirin's proven and widespread use, there has been no evidence as to whether low-dose aspirin (81 mg) or regular-strength (325 mg) aspirin is ...

Two months after undergoing renal denervation (RDN), patients with high blood pressure who did not respond to treatment with multiple medications had a greater reduction in daytime systolic blood pressure than patients who did not receive RDN, with no difference in major adverse effects, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. Patients who received RDN--a procedure that delivers energy to overactive nerves in the kidneys to decrease their activity--saw a median reduction of 8 mmHg in their daytime ambulatory systolic blood ...

The coronavirus pandemic has upended nearly every aspect of everyday life and continues to have devastating effects worldwide. It has also taken a significant toll on cardiovascular clinicians, many of whom provide direct care to patients with COVID-19, according to results of a new survey presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. Among those surveyed, burnout increased from 20% to 38% during the peak of the pandemic. Rates of burnout pre- and peak COVID-19 increased across all members of the cardiology team and was particularly striking among cardiovascular team members, ...

Clopidogrel outperformed aspirin in what is believed to be the first and largest randomized trial to compare the effectiveness of the two antiplatelet drugs as long-term maintenance therapy for patients who had no adverse events after one year of dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) following the insertion of a coronary stent. After two years of follow-up, chronic maintenance therapy with clopidogrel resulted in a 30% reduction in deaths, heart attacks, strokes or major bleeding events, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. "These data ...

Using more sensitive and frequent repeat testing of a blood test that indicates heart injury to guide the treatment of low-risk patients with symptoms of a possible heart attack resulted in patients being discharged earlier and receiving fewer cardiac stress tests but did not improve patient outcomes after one year, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. In fact, a subset of patients receiving this more sensitive and frequent blood testing protocol were more likely to have a heart attack or to die during the one-year follow-up period compared with patients whose treatment was informed by the results of conventional blood testing procedures. Troponins are proteins found in ...

Among patients who had a cardiac stent inserted after a heart attack, switching to less-potent dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) after 30 days was safer and more effective in preventing adverse events a year later than continuing on a high-potency DAPT regimen, according to data presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. "We have shown that, in patients who have had a heart attack and who've been treated with newer-generation stents and guideline-recommended medical therapy, de-escalation of DAPT by switching from ticagrelor to clopidogrel is completely safe and more effective than continuing to treat patients with ticagrelor," said Kiyuk Chang, MD, professor of Cardiology, Division of Internal Medicine at the Catholic University of ...

People with extremely high levels of triglycerides (a type of fat in the blood) and a specific genetic profile saw a substantial reduction in triglycerides after taking the human monoclonal antibody evinacumab compared with those taking a placebo, in a study presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. Severe hypertriglyceridemia is a rare disorder that causes extremely high levels of triglycerides, an accumulation of fat in the blood that can lead to heart, liver and pancreatic disease. People with severe hypertriglyceridemia commonly have triglyceride levels of 1,000 mg/dL ...

Patients at high risk for cardiovascular events who had the highest levels of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) in their blood one year after taking daily omega-3 carboxylic acid, a prescription-grade fish oil, had similar rates of major cardiovascular events as people taking a corn oil placebo, according to a secondary analysis of the STRENGTH trial presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. Researchers also found no increase in cardiovascular events among patients with the highest levels of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) compared to placebo. The impetus for this post-hoc analysis was to further examine the strikingly divergent results between STRENGTH and REDUCE-IT, another large, randomized clinical trial that used a ...

Dapagliflozin, a sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor, did not significantly reduce the risk of organ failure or death or improve recovery in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 who are at high risk of developing serious complications compared to placebo, according to data presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. The researchers, while acknowledging the results were not statistically significant, said they were encouraged by the lower numbers of organ failure and deaths observed in patients treated with dapagliflozin and by favorable safety ...

Older patients hospitalized with acute heart failure who participated in a novel 12-week physical rehabilitation (rehab) program tailored to address their specific physical impairments had significant gains not only in physical functioning but also quality of life and depression compared with those receiving usual care, regardless of their heart's ejection fraction, according to a new study presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. Participation in the program, however, did not significantly reduce rehospitalizations during the six-month follow up. Heart failure, which ...

Taking medications to protect the heart from damage associated with adjuvant breast cancer therapy--medications that are administered in addition to surgery to remove a tumor--did not significantly improve markers of heart health two years after breast cancer treatment, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. The researchers reported no significant differences between patients who took an angiotensin receptor blocker (candesartan cilexetil) or a beta-blocker (metoprolol succinate) compared with placebos in terms of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), a measure of the heart's ability to effectively pump ...

Rivaroxaban, in addition to low-dose aspirin, significantly reduced the occurrence of total severe events of the heart, limb or brain and issues related to other vascular complications in patients with symptomatic peripheral artery disease (PAD) who underwent lower extremity revascularization, a procedure to open blocked arteries in the leg. The findings, presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session, expand on earlier data and underscore the broad absolute benefits of this strategy in this high-risk patient population, researchers said. "To our knowledge, this is the first time that the addition of low-dose rivaroxaban to aspirin has been clearly shown to reduce ...

In patients who had a coronary stent inserted after experiencing the most severe type of heart attack, the use of a technique that measures blood flow and pressure through a partially blocked artery to determine if a second stenting procedure is needed did not improve outcomes and was more costly than using angiography, or a heart X-ray, alone to guide the procedure, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. "The strategy of using fractional flow reserve (FFR) to guide the stenting procedure is not superior to the standard technique of using angiography to treat additional partially blocked arteries," said Etienne Puymirat, MD, professor of cardiology at the University of Paris, director of intensive care at the Georges ...

HOUSTON - (May 17, 2021) - In an important step toward the clinical application of synthetic biology, Rice University researchers have engineered a bacterium with the necessary capabilities for diagnosing a human disease. The engineered strain of the gut bacteria E. coli senses pH and glows when it encounters acidosis, an acidic condition that often occurs during flareups of inflammatory bowel diseases like colitis, ileitis and Crohn's disease. Researchers at the University of Colorado (CU) School of Medicine used the Rice-created organism in a mouse model of Crohn's disease to show acidosis activates a signature set of genes. The corresponding ...

Humans leave their "footprints" on the land area all around the globe. These land-use changes play an important role for nutrition, climate, and biodiversity. Scientists at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) combined satellite data with statistics from the past 60 years and found that global land-use changes affect about 32 percent of the land area. This means that they are about four times as extensive as previously estimated. The researchers publish their findings in the scientific journal Nature Communications. Whether it is deforestation, urban growth, agricultural expansion, or reforestation - land-use changes are diverse and have ...

Researchers from Tohoku University have developed a new numerical method that paves the way for simulating landslide tsunamis. Their research was published in the journal Computational Mechanics on May 13, 2021. Landslides occurring on land or underneath the sea - known as subaerial and submarine landslides respectively - can cause devastating tsunamis. They also pose other hazards such as severing submarine cables and pipelines. Yet the mechanisms at play behind these landslides are less well understood, partly due to the multifaceted interactions taking place: a collapse of the seabed and/or the interaction between soil and water. Conventional approaches make it difficult to ...

Clinics that mailed mifepristone and misoprostol tablets to patients during the pandemic have experienced a high demand and have been able to safely screen and care for patients via telehealth, according to two studies recently published online in the journal Contraception. The first study identifies factors that supported the provision of abortion pills across four healthcare settings. Factors that contributed to success included clinic staff helping to organize the telehealth appointment and to distribute pills, the first paper noted, as well as already having telehealth ...

Doctors often recommend Omega-3s to help patients lower their cholesterol and improve heart health. Those Omega-3s can come from fatty fish like salmon and mackerel, or supplements that often contain a combination of the acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Now, new research from the Intermountain Healthcare Heart Institute in Salt Lake City finds that higher EPA blood levels alone lowered the risk of major cardiac events and death in patients, while DHA blunted the cardiovascular benefits of EPA. Higher DHA levels at any level of EPA, worsened health outcomes. Results of the Intermountain study, which examined nearly 1,000 patients over a 10-year-period, will be presented virtually at the ...

Gears and mechanical transmissions are at home in the Emilia-Romagna region, the Motor Valley of northern Italy. A team of researchers from the University of Bologna and the Institute for Organic Synthesis and Photoreactivity of the National Research Council (Cnr-Isof) in Bologna, led by Massimo Baroncini and Alberto Credi, has planned, constructed and operated NanoGear, a device consisting of interlocked molecular components and designed to function as a gear. Since molecules are nanometric objects (1 nanometer = 1 millionth of a millimetre), it is an exceedingly small device: certainly, ...

DALLAS, May 17, 2021 -- Detecting a critical heart defect before birth (congenital heart defects) is less likely when a mother lives in a rural area, lives in a neighborhood with low socioeconomic status or is Hispanic, according to new research published today in the American Heart Association's flagship journal Circulation. Diagnosing a heart defect before birth reduces infant death rates, increases access to prompt medical treatment, improves neurodevelopmental outcomes and decreases the risk of brain injury for the infant after birth. "The benefits of prenatal diagnosis for heart defects have been recognized for years, yet prenatal detection occurs in less than 60% of congenital heart disease cases in many U.S. ...