In the wake of HPS2-THRIVE many have argued that there is no longer any reason to prescribe niacin. William Boden, the lead investigator of AIM-HIGH and COURAGE, thinks there were enough flaws in the design of the niacin trials to justify the cautious use of niacin in certain circumstances. Says Boden: “There is evidence of…
Should Niacin Still Be Prescribed? William Boden Versus Harlan Krumholz
January 9, 2013 by 1 Comment
2012 In Review: A Bad Year For Conventional Wisdom
December 24, 2012 by 3 Comments
This was a really grim year for anyone who thought we had things pretty well figured out. Time and again conventional wisdom was thrown out the window. 2012 forced the cardiology community to reconsider what it thought it knew about HDL cholesterol, platelet function tests, aspirin resistance, triple therapy, IABP, and more. One device company,…
Early Look: New Methods To Enhance Cholesterol Efflux
November 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Although clinical trials of HDL-boosting CETP inhibitors have so far failed to produce positive results, many other avenues of HDL-related research remain active. A glimpse at the very early phases of two intriguing lines of research in this area was offered on Monday at the AHA. Apo A-1 is thought to be the key HDL…
Dalcetrapib: Another HDL-Raising CETP Inhibitor Bites The Dust
November 5, 2012 by 1 Comment
Another HDL-raising CETP inhibitor has failed to demonstrate cardiovascular benefit in a large clinical trial. With the presentation of the dal-OUTCOMES trial at the American Heart Association in Los Angeles andsimultaneous publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, dalcetrapib joins torceptrapib on the list of once-promising CETP inhibitors. In dal-OUTCOMES, 15,871 patients with a recent…
You Know Nothing, Dr. Snow: Why Medicine Can’t Be More Like Facebook
May 18, 2012 by 3 Comments
Medicine can never be like Facebook, despite what Matt Herper argues over at Forbes. Perhaps he was just trolling for hits on a day when everyone is thinking about the Facebook IPO, but Herper proposed, with apparently seriousness, that medicine needs to model itself on the tech world in order to match the kind of…
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