Blood Vessels

On Monday, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health released study results showing that red meat consumption was associated with a higher risk of early death. The more red meat -- beef, pork or lamb, for the purposes of the research -- study participants reported they ate, the more likely they were to die during the period of time that data collection took place (more than 20 years). So what is it in red meat that might make it unhealthy?   No one is sure, exactly, but the authors of the Harvard study mention a few possible culprits in their paper in the Archives of Internal Medicine .   First, eating red meat has been linked to the incidence of heart disease.  The saturated fat and cholesterol in beef, pork and lamb are believed to play a role in the risk of coronary heart disease .  The type of iron found in red meat, known as heme iron, has also been linked to heart attacks and fatal heart disease.  Sodium in processed meats may increase blood pressure, which is a risk factor for heart disease. Other chemicals that are used in processed meats may play a role in heart disease as well, by damaging blood vessels.

Doctors are one step closer to a simple test that could predict whether a patient is about to have a heart attack - by using a blood sample to detect cells that have sloughed off of damaged blood vessel walls. The finding, published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, could potentially address "the greatest unmet need" facing cardiologists, said lead author Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist at the Scripps Translational Science Institute in San Diego. Though physicians can easily detect a heart attack that's already underway, every year tens of thousands of patients walk away from the doctor's office after having passed a stress test, only to suffer a devastating heart attack within a few weeks.

Answering the "decaf or regular" question has become more problematic. Caffeine can give some people the jitters, keeping them awake or speeding up their heart rate, but decaffeinated coffee, researchers have found, may be bad for your heart. Java without the jolt increases the levels of so-called bad cholesterol in the bloodstream and reduces levels of good cholesterol, researchers reported last week at a meeting of the American Heart Assn. in Dallas.

British actress Judi Dench is seeking to downplay fears over the revelation that she is suffering from a degenerative eye condition. The Oscar-winning Dench, perhaps best known as James Bond's mysterious boss M, has been dealing with two different forms of macular generation -- one in each eye. According to Reuters, she can no longer read scripts and has to have someone read them out loud to her, "like reading me a story. " According to the National Eye Institute, macular degeneration occurs in an area known as the macula, which sits at the center of the light-sensitive tissue known as the retina, located at the back of the eye socket.

Ever found a mysterious black-and-blue mark on your body and wondered how it gotthere? Whether the result of major trauma or an inadvertent bump, bruising is one way to assess damage to tissue. The factors involved in what makes a bruise and how it heals are fairly simple. In an effort to get to the bottom of bruising, we went to three specialists who deal in bruises: Dr. Philomena McAndrew, a Los Angeles hematologist; Dr. William Shankwiler, a Pasadena orthopedic surgeon, and Dr.

California researchers have developed a technique to grow artificial blood vessels from a patient's own skin cells -- a technique that could quickly find application in kidney-failure victims undergoing dialysis. The technique has been tested in 10 patients, and preliminary results published Thursday in the journal Lancet suggest that the blood vessels can remain viable for long periods. "This technology is very, very promising," Dr.

A new, easier-to-use blood-thinning pill offers the first potential alternative in 50 years to warfarin, the standard treatment given to millions of people to prevent blood clots, researchers report today. The new drug has been tested in 17,000 patients for a number of uses and has been shown to work as well as or, in some cases, better than warfarin at preventing dangerous clots, the researchers said.

Chemists are attempting to modify the surface of certain plastics in the hope of developing advanced bionic materials that ultimately can be used as implantable blood vessels. Experiments under way at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico join a growing repertoire of potential uses of plastic to replace malfunctioning physiological systems.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have produced for the first time artificial blood vessels from cells grown in the laboratory. The living blood vessels hold great promise for replacing small vessels that have been damaged by diabetes, blood vessel diseases or physical injury, the scientists said. As many as 300,000 people each year in the United States could benefit from small blood vessel replacements if they should become widely available.

Stents--lattice-like metal tubes that expand inside an artery--are an effective way to keep blood vessels open after balloon angioplasty, but they may be overused in the United States, researchers report today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Stents were introduced only about four years ago, but 800,000 will be implanted in 500,000 Americans this year.

Vampire bats like it warm: To home in and bite with fanged efficiency, they've developed a temperature sensor to guide them to their prey, a new study has found. All mammals need heat sensors to help them avoid potentially harmful temperatures such as those that would be encountered from a forest fire or dangerously hot water. This is achieved by a protein called TRPV1 that forms a pore — known as an ion channel — in the membranes of cells. TRPV1 detects temperatures higher than 109 degrees Fahrenheit.

Researchers at De Montfort University, the University of York and Loughborough University in Britain have released a study suggesting that many students with sickle cell disease aren't getting the help they need from their schools.   Sickle cell disease is a rare, inherited blood condition - in the U.S., most prevalent in African Americans - that causes sufferers to develop abnormally shaped, "sickled" red blood cells that clog blood vessels and cause complications such as chronic severe pain, organ damage and sometimes stroke.

Heart bypass patients may soon be able to get new arteries without having to sacrifice vessels from other parts of their body, thanks to ready-made, off-the-shelf artificial blood vessels. Biomedical engineers have been trying to build replacement blood vessels, needed for coronary artery bypass surgery and kidney dialysis patients, for three decades. Researchers from Humacyte Inc., in Durham, N.C., discovered the trick: recruiting cells to build the vessel, then washing them away so the nonliving tissue is storable and works for anyone.

Surgeons could use artificial blood vessels in several ways: Coronary artery bypass grafts: If one of the heart's arteries is blocked or diseased, a new vessel may be necessary. Surgeons can harvest arteries and veins from elsewhere in the patient's body, but they're in limited supply. Peripheral bypass grafts: Atherosclerosis can narrow arteries beyond the heart. Again, the body has only so many options for replacement. Kidney dialysis shunts: People on dialysis need an easily accessible vessel containing fast-moving blood.

The artificial vessels created by Humacyte do not perfectly mimic nature's recipe. They lack a major component of natural vessels: the protein elastin. Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have now coaxed engineered vessels to make elastin, they reported Feb. 3 in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The rubber-band material that allows veins and arteries to snap back into shape after every pulse, elastin has long been one of the greatest challenges in any attempt to make artificial blood vessels.

A novel theory about the cause of multiple sclerosis — one that quickly led to millions of dollars in research pledges and an increasingly popular, though unproved, treatment — took a hit Monday from two studies calling the premise into question. The theory, proposed last year, had gained traction in a field desperate for research advances. It suggests that multiple sclerosis can be traced to obstruction in the veins carrying blood from the brain back to the heart — leading to nervous system damage and causing the hallmark symptoms of muscle weakness, decreased coordination and vision problems.

A burst blood vessel made President Reagan's left eye appear red today during a luncheon address to the National Space Club. "It didn't affect his vision and there was no pain," said White House press spokesman Larry Speakes. "It happened (Wednesday) night," Speakes said, and Reagan noticed it when he arose Thursday. Speakes said Reagan has experienced broken blood vessels in his eye "two or three times" since becoming President in 1981.

The first physical explanation of why African Americans are prone to high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and strokes has been announced by researchers who say the findings may open the door to the development of new treatments. University of Georgia scientists found that arteries from black patients with severe heart disease were unable to return quickly to normal size after they had constricted in response to stress or medications.

A successful hand transplant has a long list of ingredients: a motivated patient; a team of plastic surgeons, orthopedists, neurosurgeons and others to reattach bone, ligaments, nerves and blood vessels; and a suitable donor hand that matches the patient's size, skin color and even hair patterns. The surgery, which can run as long as 14 hours, has been available for a little more than 10 years — the first successful hand transplant was performed in France in 1998, with the U.S. following a year later.

A stiffening of the aging brain's blood vessels reduces their ability to respond to changes in blood pressure, increasing the risk of falls by as much as 70%, researchers reported Monday. Although the change in the arteries is only one of many factors that lead to falls among the elderly, the findings provide a potential target for intervention, said Dr. Joe Verghese, a neurologist at Albert Einstein University College of Medicine who was not involved in the research. Treating high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes, among other factors, can reduce the stiffening.