No brain benefit from hormone therapy in women with heart disease

Another menopausal myth is challenged: Women with existing coronary disease do not realize improvement in their cognitive function as a result of taking the most common form of hormone replacement therapy, a UCSF study has found. Investigators followed more than 1000 women from ten US test sites for four years. Half took a placebo; the other half took hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Although other, smaller studies have shown an improvement, in the UCSF study the women who received HRT performed no better on standard tests of cognitive function than those who received placebo.

Blood Proteins Put Dialysis Patients at Higher Risk of Heart Disease

A new study shows that two proteins are accurate predictors of heart attack or stroke in kidney dialysis patients. The research team found that high levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, and low levels of albumin, a sign of malnutrition, had strong ties to heart disease in these patients, who are many times more likely to develop heart problems than the general population. “Both inflammation and malnutrition play an important role in the high risk of cardiovascular disease among dialysis patients,” says Josef Coresh, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study and associate professor of epidemiology, medicine and biostatistics at Hopkins. “Testing for these proteins will allow us to sooner identify patients at high risk, and to manage heart disease risk factors more effectively.”