Screening must be supplemented by broader public health approaches. Screen and treat strategies to prevent type 2 diabetes are doomed to failure, according to a large new systematic review and meta-analysis published in The BMJ. Instead, the authors said and outside experts agreed, any effort to combat the already enormous and still growing problem of type 2…
2016: Great Year Or Greatest Year Ever?
December 21, 2016 by 1 Comment
Editor’s note: Once again Larry was too depressed to write the 2016 yearly review. (Actually, he’s hiding under his bed.) Veteran healthcare journalist and eternal optimist Candide Corn has again kindly agreed to take over the task this year. Candide’s motto is “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” What a great year!…
More Shots Fired in ‘Sugar War’
December 19, 2016 by 1 Comment
–Industry-sponsored study questions current guidelines on dietary sugar. Dietary guidelines relating to sugar— all of which recommend significant reductions in sugar intake— are based on weak evidence and are not trustworthy, according to a systematic review published in Annals of Internal Medicine. But an accompanying editorial points out that the systematic review is itself not…
Novartis Withdraws Support For Controversial Entresto Contest
December 19, 2016 by 3 Comments
(Updated) Novartis will no longer sponsor a contest designed to support the publication of peer review articles about Entresto, the company’s important new heart failure drug. The contest is taking place on Cureus, an open access journal, publishing platform, and vehicle for industry-sponsored content. The contest offered $10,000 in rewards for articles supporting a recent…
Novartis Contest Rewards Positive Peer Review Articles About Entresto
December 15, 2016 by 3 Comments
(See the bottom of the story for updates. Since the original publication of the story the cardiologists on the “peer review panel” have resigned and Novartis has withdrawn its support for the contest.) Despite the fact that it had one of the biggest clinical trial successes in recent years, the Novartis heart failure drug Entresto has…
Seeking Profit and Investors, Rogue Lab Moves Into Small Hospitals
December 9, 2016 by 6 Comments
A controversial new laboratory company specializing in “advanced cardiovascular risk testing” is developing an innovative, highly profitable– and legally dubious– new business model. Details of the scheme are spelled out in a “Management Presentation” slide presentation sent to me by a confidential source. The slide presentation, according to my source, is being shown by executives at True Health…
The GiveAway Act
December 6, 2016 by Leave a Comment
The 21st Century Cures Act should be called the 21st Century GiveAway Act. The Act may not even deliver on its main attraction– the funding of new research– but will instantly definitely give a regulatory boost to a host of special interests, including drug and device makers. As Michael Hiltzik writes in the LA Times,…
Telling People What They Want To Hear: Alt-Med And Donald Trump
December 4, 2016 by 12 Comments
Donald Trump won* the election because he told people what they wanted to hear. Alternative medicine is growing in popularity because it tells people what they want to hear. Of course, there’s a big difference between telling people what they want to hear and actually delivering on those promises. He can say it as often as he…
Genetic Studies Offer Hint Of Clinical Benefits-And Risks- of PCSK9 Inhibitors
November 30, 2016 by 2 Comments
–Both cardiovascular benefits and increase in diabetes seem likely. There is no more eagerly awaited question in cardiovascular medicine than the clinical role of the PCSK9 inhibitors. The first reports from a series of outcomes trials are not due until next year. But two large genetic studies published this week deliver strong indirect evidence that…
Prenatal Genetic Test Billing Practices Questioned
November 29, 2016 by Leave a Comment
–Sequenom billed insurance companies $2,760 but let patients pay only $200? Patients who order an expensive prenatal genetic test from Sequenom are being told that they will not be held responsible for the vast majority of the bill if it is denied by insurance. This policy may appear to benefit patients but may be considered a…
Saturated Fats Linked To Heart Disease Once Again
November 27, 2016 by 10 Comments
–But critics say that observational studies can’t establish causal relationship. A prominent group of nutrition researchers have once again linked saturated fats to increased coronary heart disease. The new paper, published in BMJ, is the third paper in the past year to decry saturated fats. Along with the previous two papers, published in JACC and JAMA Internal…
Guest Post: Two Nations Separated by 5.3 mm
November 23, 2016 by 1 Comment
Editor’s note: This guest post is by Saurabh Jha, MBBS, a radiologist at the University of Pennsylvania. This post will also be published on The Health Care Blog, where Jha is the associate editor. A popular meme is that the US spends more on healthcare than other developed nations but has nothing to show for…
How The Internet Brought Us Donald Trump
November 20, 2016 by 4 Comments
Does the internet expand our world? Does it lead us to a broader and richer view of our world and ourselves? It seemed like a simple question. The year was 1994 and the internet was still new. I was sitting in a classroom full of MIT students as a guest during my year as a…
Mixed Results For ApoA-1 Therapies
November 16, 2016 by Leave a Comment
–It’s still not time to write the obituary for all HDL therapies. There was good news and bad news for a category of experimental drugs that attempt to mimic the putative beneficial effect of HDL at the American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans. Thirteen years after setting the field on fire with a promising…
Lunchroom Scandal At The AHA: Day Two Of Buttergate
November 15, 2016 by 5 Comments
–After a CardioBrief investigation the American Heart Association changes the lunchroom menu There is no better proof that journalism can change the world– both for the good and the bad– than Buttergate. Yesterday your intrepid reporter exposed the ongoing scandal of Buttergate taking place within the press lunchroom at the American Heart Association meeting in New…
More Progress For Novel PCSK9 Drug
November 15, 2016 by Leave a Comment
–The PCSK9 synthesis inhibitor from The Medicines Company is getting close to phase 3 trials. More early information continues to accumulate about a novel cholesterol drug under development by The Medicines Company. The drug, which was initially created by Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, uses RNA interference technology to inhibit the synthesis of PCSK9 in the liver. The main…
Is The American Heart Association Trying To Kill Health Reporters?
November 14, 2016 by 4 Comments
The answer is no. The AHA is not trying to kill us. But its dietary advice is consistently confusing and occasionally wrong, and health reporters in New Orleans may end up as collateral damage. Just take a look at what’s being served in the press room at the big American Heart Association meeting going on now…
Statin Nation ‘Census’ Highlights Major Disparities
November 14, 2016 by Leave a Comment
–Women, minorities treated at significantly lower rates Anyone reading this is almost certainly aware of the enormous importance of statins in the current health scene. But until now they may have had a hard time to bring precise numbers and statistics to this all important story. Now data from a large federal survey confirm that…
No Cognitive Benefit from Heart Drugs in HOPE-3
November 13, 2016 by Leave a Comment
–Substudy finds mental function unimproved by BP, cholesterol treatments NEW ORLEANS — A large substudy of the HOPE-3 trial found no benefit relating to cognitive function in patients who took cholesterol or blood pressure-lowering drugs. In recent years cognitive decline and dementia have emerged as a concern equal if not even greater than cardiovascular disease…
Long-Term Benefit in HF Patients Elusive for Novel Vasodilator
November 13, 2016 by Leave a Comment
–Investigational drug ularitide had no effect on mortality or clinical outcomes NEW ORLEANS — Short term vasodilator treatment for acute heart failure in the hospital did not lead to long term clinical benefits in the largest and most rigorous trial in the field yet performed, researchers said. In the TRUE-AHF trial 2,157 patients with acute…
Debate Ensues As USPSTF Finalizes Statin Primary Prevention Guideline
November 13, 2016 by Leave a Comment
–Broad disagreement about how, when, and if to use statins. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has issued final recommendations regarding the use of statins for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease in adults. The recommendations, first proposed last December, are broadly consistent with the 2013 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association guidelines. But accompanying the…
Novel Cholesterol Therapy Flops And Company Ends Development
November 8, 2016 by Leave a Comment
–13 years after ApoA-1 Milano sparked excitement the novel HDL therapy appears to be dead. After 13 years and despite the efforts of 3 separate companies, the novel cholesterol therapy known as ApoA-1 Milano appears to be dead. On Monday afternoon the Medicines Company announced that it had discontinued development of the drug and would…
Cardiac Devices Could Become a Big Problem For Califf And The FDA
November 7, 2016 by 1 Comment
–Approvals with no strong evidence of efficacy: What could go wrong? The FDA has a big problem. It likes to approve new drugs and devices. Approvals look good politically and allow the FDA to boast each year about their large number of approvals. But when the FDA approves a drug or device that doesn’t work…
Early Watchman Experience Reassuring, But Many Questions Remain
November 4, 2016 by Leave a Comment
In the year and a half after its approval the Watchman left atrial appendage closure device was successfully implanted 95.6% of the time, or more than 3,600 times out of a total of 3,822 consecutive cases. The finding comes from procedural data collected by Boston Scientific and presented at TCT by Vivek Reddy (Mt. Sinai)…
The Impact Of ABSORB II: Down The Slippery Slope
November 2, 2016 by 2 Comments
When it was approved earlier this year in July the Absorb (Abbott) bioresorbable stent provoked a fair amount of discussion about the “slippery slope of noninferiority.” Although the stent met the FDA criteria for approval, the available trial results went in the wrong direction and there was a particularly concerning warning sign of a higher…
Recent Comments