February 2015
Take
care of your heart during American Heart Month
 Get your body moving and your heart pumping in February for American
Heart Month. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States
among both men and women. Obesity,
physical inactivity, diabetes, and high blood pressure all can increase the
chance of getting heart disease. But you can take action to prevent the disease
and control the factors that contribute to it.
The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney
Diseases (NIDDK) provides information about the links between heart disease,
diabetes, kidney disease, and other related conditions. NIDDK’s National
Diabetes Education Program helps people with diabetes learn how to lower
their chance of developing heart disease by managing the ABCs of
diabetes: the A1C test (used to diagnose diabetes and track blood sugar in
people with diabetes), Blood Pressure, Cholesterol, and Stop Smoking. The
National Kidney Disease Education Program describes the connection between
kidney disease and heart
or blood vessel disease. NIDDK’s National
Diabetes Information Clearinghouse also provides content about the
connection between diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.
The
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s The Heart Truth®
program aims to make women more aware of the danger of heart disease and get
them to take action. The program is geared toward women ages 40 to 60, and
helps them make healthy lifestyle changes to reduce their disease risk. The
Heart Truth® offers resources that organizations, community groups, and others
can use to plan events and spread the word about women and heart health. Find
out how you and your community can get
involved.
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New drug shows promise for treating the liver disease NASH
An experimental drug improved liver health in people with nonalcoholic
steatohepatitis (NASH), a type of fatty liver disease, shows a study funded by
the National Institutes of Health. But side effects of the new drug,
obeticholic acid (OCA), included cholesterol changes and itching.
The multi-center study tested OCA for treating NASH.
This common disease is linked to obesity and may lead to liver injury or
failure. The study included 283 adults with NASH at eight medical centers
across the country. Researchers randomly assigned people to take the drug or a
placebo (also called a “sugar pill,” a drug with no active ingredients) for 72
weeks.
Compared
with the placebo, the drug improved liver health, reduced inflammation and fat
in the liver, and lowered body weight. But the drug also increased LDL (“bad”) cholesterol
and decreased HDL (“good”) cholesterol. These changes could increase the chance
of getting heart disease, which is already higher in people with NASH. Another
side effect was itching, which affected about one in five people taking the
drug.
Health benefits and side effects went away when people
stopped taking OCA. More studies are needed to better understand the drug’s
long-term benefits and safety.
To
learn more, check out the full news release.
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