Figures released by England’s National Health Service have revealed that around 500 U.K. residents die prematurely each week from complications of diabetes, including amputations, CVD, stroke and kidney disease.

The FDA has approved canagliflozin (Invokana) to reduce the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) including stroke, heart attack and cardiac death in patients with type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular disease. It is the first oral diabetes medication to gain this indication, according to drug manufacturer Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies.

Guideline-directed medical therapies like beta-blockers and renin-angiotensin system blockers (RASBs)—but not aldosterone antagonists—are associated with improved outcomes in heart failure patients hospitalized with a midrange ejection fraction, researchers reported in the current edition of the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is pausing a taxpayer-funded, $63 million trial of cardiac stems cells over questions about the basis for the research.

Though it’s been linked tenuously in the past to psychological stressors and genetics, the majority of cases of spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) can’t be traced back to a concomitant arteriopathy, inflammatory disorder or evident risk factor, according to research published in the American Journal of Cardiology Oct. 29.

The expanded window for thrombectomy in acute stroke care ranked No. 3 on Cleveland Clinic’s top 10 medical innovations for 2019—one of several developments on the list with implications for cardiovascular treatment.

Cardiac transplant candidates are better off accepting an organ with a higher risk of transmitting diseases than waiting for another heart, suggests a study published Oct. 29 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

A therapeutic vaccine developed in Japan could work as well as oral antithrombotic drugs to prevent secondary ischemic stroke, according to preliminary research published Oct. 29 in Hypertension.