Digoxin, a cardiac glycoside popularly sold under the brand name Lanoxin, poses a major threat to the heart health of atrial fibrillation (AF) and heart failure (HF) patients, according to a review published in the American Journal of Cardiology Oct. 4. Even without confounding conditions, the drug can raise an individual’s risk of all-cause mortality.

Half of women and a third of men will be diagnosed with stroke, dementia or parkinsonism in their lifetime, according to a nearly three-decades-long study of neurological disease in the Dutch population. Up to 50 percent of those cases, though, might be mitigated with early prevention.

Forearm blood flow is preserved two decades after coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery using radial artery grafts, Australian researchers reported in a letter published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

As an adjunct to standard treatment for patients with type 2 diabetes, liraglutide appears at least as protective against cardiovascular events for patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) as for those without CKD, according to a subgroup analysis of the LEADER trial published in Circulation.

Women who experience menopause before age 40 are twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes (T2D) than those who reach menopause at a more normal age, according to research presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes’ annual conference in Berlin last week.

“The people most in need of it, those who might benefit from tests and distance monitoring, are the least likely to get (the Apple Watch),” Aaron E. Carroll, MD, wrote in the New York Times. “If we truly believed this was a medical test beneficial to the general population, insurance should pay for it."

The long-held belief that sudden cardiac arrests (SCAs) occur most commonly on weekday mornings has been debunked by a team in Portland, Oregon, whose recent study of more than 1,500 SCA victims failed to identify any peak windows during which heart patients were prone to sudden cardiac death.