The cost of heart disease treatment is expected to triple by the year 2030. Over the next 20 years, experts predict the overall cost of treatment will increase to $545 billion thanks to the aging baby boom population.

Despite much advancement in the field of heart disease during the past 50 years, the same cannot be said for the next twenty. Leading researchers say do not expect medical breakthroughs on the same scale as the past years.  In other words, more people are getting older and developing heart disease and technology cannot keep up.

According to the numbers, more than 40% of all Americans or 116 million people will have heart disease in 2030.  The biggest increases will be stroke at an estimated 24.9% and heart failure at an estimated 25%.

The only way to combat this prediction is to prevent as much heart disease as possible, right now. A panel of experts suggested that the U.S. healthcare system should focus their resources on prevention and early intervention on risk factors for heart disease. Fighting heart disease today is much cheaper than paying the price in the future.

Researchers have found two new genes associated to heart disease. These new findings can lead to better detection and prevention of heart disease for those at risk in some.

DNA of 12,400 people with coronary artery disease (CAD) and 7,400 people without CAD were analyzed. To further identify genes closely linked to heart disease, researchers also compared 5,800 CAD patients with a history of heart disease to 3,600 patients with no such history. This led to the discovery of ADAMTS7.

ADAMTS7 is a gene connected to the buildup of plaque in the arties of the heart. The same enzyme found in people with blood type O had some protection against heart attack, even with arterial plaque. This doesn’t mean people with blood type O shouldn’t worry about heart disease, other factors like smoking and high blood pressure still factor into heart disease risk.

With the identification of these gene markers, and future discoveries, the future looks bright. Fighting heart disease will become much easier due to treatments targeting a patient’s individual heart disease risk.

Heart disease and stroke deaths are on the decline, but the costs are at an all-time high. What experts take from this is morality from heart disease and stroke may be down, but still remain a problem for Americans. Despite new methods to combat heart disease and stroke, people are still suffering from these conditions everyday.

Heart disease and stroke still remain the leading cause of death in America. Combined, they account for one in every three deaths every year. What researchers want to do is to track the risk factors of these diseases instead of tracking the diseases themselves.

The heart disease and stroke risk factors are the following:

• 33.5% of adults 20 years and older in America have high blood pressure, 80% are aware if their condition, but less than half have it under control
• 23.1% of men and 18.1% of women smoke and 19.5% of students grade 9 to 12 smoke
• 15% of adults 20 and older have a total cholesterol levels 240 mg/dL or higher
• More than 67% of adults are overweight
• Childhood obesity in children aged 6 to 11 is more than 20%

However, what seems to play one of the biggest roles is genetics. A clear and concise family history is the key to track heart disease and stroke risk factors.

Children who eat a lot of fruits and vegetables have a lower risk of having stiff arteries as adults.

What researchers did was compare childhood and adulthood lifestyle factors, like diet and exercise, to determine the stiffening of artery walls. As adults, they were administered pulse wave velocity to measure arterial stiffness.

Pulse wave velocity works by measuring the velocity of blood ejected throughout the wall of the arterial tree when the heart beats. The velocity of the wave is dependent on how stiff the arteries walls are. So the stiffer the arterial wall, the higher the velocity is. This is important because arterial stiffening is closely associated with atherosclerosis, a huge factor in cardiovascular diseases.

Researchers examined 1,622 participants. They were around the age of 3 to 18 and were followed for 27 years. The study highlights the following observations:

• A pattern of eating less vegetables and fruits as a child was associated with a stiffer artery walls even when other cardiovascular risk factors are accounted for
• People who ate more vegetables and fruits as a child had a 6% lower pulse wave compared to those who ate very little vegetables and fruits

With this new evidence, there is even more reason for parents and pediatrician to encourage their children to eat their fruit and veggies.

Cardiac stem cells have the potential to create new heart muscle and vessel tissue to treat heart failure. Even the stem cells from sick and elderly patients show this possibility.

21 patients had tissue removed from the muscular walls of their hearts. Scientists used this tissue to isolate and multiply the cardiac stem cells (CSC). The majority of the patients had ischemic cardiomyopathy, 11 had diabetes, and average age of patients was 65. However, no matter the age, heart disease, or any other factors, researchers were still able to extract functional cardiac stem cells.

Researchers were able to extract 20% more CSCs from the heart of women then men, but age or diabetes did not affect the number of stem cells obtained. Women tend to live longer than men, thus their hearts are usually more resilient than men’s.

These cardiac stem cells are already programmed to form cardiac muscle, so these stem cells have an advantage over others stem cells to treat the heart. The best part of this discovery is the fact everyone has CSC in reserve despite age, ethnicity, diet, and other factors. However, more research is needed to thoroughly back up these claims.

Heavy drinking or binge drinking a couple of days of the week may possibly be worse for the heart than drinking moderately for a week.

Researchers compared the drinking patterns and heart health of people in France and Belfast, Northern Ireland. People in both these places drink the same amount, but in Belfast, people drink in binges. Belfast people drink heavily in one or two days the same amount of alcohol French people drink over a week.

9,758 men in France and Belfast were examined over 10 years. The scientists separated the men into four different age groups: never drinkers, former drinkers, regular drinkers, and binge drinkers. These men were all in between the ages of 50 to 59 and did not suffer from ischemic heart disease. Researchers then weighed out their cardiovascular risk factors.

The result of the study was men who binge drink have twice the risk of having a heart attack. Not only heart attack, but binge drinkers were also twice as likely to die of heart disease over a 10-year period.

Binge drinking is dangerous, but people still do it. Young people especially because at that age heart disease risk is so low. No matter the age or situation, binge drinking is just unhealthy in general.

Stroke guidelines were recently updated to further the prevention of strokes.

The guidelines were last updated in 2006. Between 1999 and 2006, stroke had a 30% reduction and Larry B. Goldstein, M.D., believes it is because of better stroke prevention rather than treatment. So the updated guidelines focus on more ways to prevent stroke.

This new set of guidelines addresses for the first time the prevention of stroke through categories like ischemic stroke, non-ischemic stroke, and transient ischemic attack (TIA).

87% of strokes are ischemic strokes. An ischemic stroke happens when a blood vessel in or leading to the brain is blocked. TIA stroke occurs when the blockage is only temporary, but a major risk factor for a later, larger stroke. Non-ischemic stroke is when the blood vessel ruptures and bleeds out, also known as a hemorrhagic stroke.

The new guidelines feature many key updates based on recent research:

• Healthy lifestyle choices can lower risk of stroke up to 80%
• Emergency room doctors should identify patients at the most risk for stroke and make referrals, conduct screenings, or begin preventive therapy to those patients
• Aspirin is not recommended for prevention of first stroke in low-risk individuals, but in those who stroke risk outweighs the bleeding risk of aspirin

The U.S. death rate from congenital heart defects has dropped significantly according to article in American Heart Association.  From 1999 to 2006, deaths among children and adults dropped 24%.

Congenital heart defects are structural abnormalities within the heart. People are born with them, so one cannot develop a congenital heart defect. There are a variety of congenital heart defects. Some are mild while some are quite serious. Congenital heart defects can increase the risk of other medical conditions such as irregular heartbeats.

The analysis was based on examining death certificates. It was not possible to figure the reason for the decline through this method alone. Though, improved technology and medical care for infants and children played a large role as infant deaths contributed to 48% of all congenital heart defect-related deaths.

With more children with congenital heart defects surviving long enough to become adults, they switch from pediatric cardiologists to cardiologists who treat adults. These cardiologists are tasked not only to  provide care, but also to understand the long-term effects of heart defects.

A study has found injecting people with chronic heart failure with their own bone-marrow stem cells improves their heart function and prolongs their lifespan. Within three months, the effects of stem cell treatment were evident. The patients were receiving these benefits and continued for the next 5 years.

This is not the first time stem cell research has been shown to help treat heart failure and other heart-related illnesses. However, this study is one of the biggest to date for heart disease and the first to show how treatment can cut the risk of death from chronic heart failure.

One of the most astonishing aspects of stem cell treatment was the lack of risk and it could be used on top of other treatments for chronic heart failure,

For the study, bone marrow stem cells were taken from the top of the patient’s pelvic bone and processed to the lab to allow them to be injected into scarred heart muscle. During the five-year period, seven out of 191 patients died while on the stem cell treatment compared to the 32 out of 200 patients who did not have the treatment. The difference is significant.

Despite positive results, stem cell treatment is far away from mainstream use. The study requires more precise testing because patients knew they were receiving the treatment. If the study wants to be legitimate, the sampling has to be completely randomized to ensure accuracy.

A new study reported American women who ate more protein-rich foods instead of red and processed meats had a lower risk of developing heart disease.

Red meat, processed meat, and high-fat dairy products had been associated with higher risk of heart disease in this study.  In fact, women who partook in two servings of these foods a day were 30% more likely to develop coronary heart disease. Replacing the amount of red meat intake has great health benefits.

Eating poultry, fish, and nuts instead of red meats had a significant effect on lowering heart disease risk. Some foods go as high as reducing heart disease risk by 30%.

The study followed 84,136 women, ages from 30 to 55 years old, for 26 years. Researchers thought the study was so thorough and combined with their knowledge overall risk factors; researchers think the results could be applied to men also.