Cardiovascular Research:Specific Vitamin D levels linked to heart problems ♦ Poor air quality increases patients' risk of heart attack ♦ Moving to a walking neighborhood is good for your blood pressure

Poor air quality increases patients' risk of heart attack

People with heart disease face an increased risk of a serious heart attack during poor air quality days.

New Milestone in Cardiovascular Disease Management for People with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Cardiovascular disease deaths are declining in people who have been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis after the year 2000, according to new research. This decline is found when compared to people diagnosed with RA in previous decades as well as when compared to people without the disease – signifying an encouraging milestone.

Specific vitamin D levels linked to heart problems

A lack of vitamin D can result in weak bones. Recent studies also show that vitamin D deficiency is linked to more serious health risks such as coronary artery disease, heart attacks, and strokes.

Moving to a walking neighborhood is good for your blood pressure

People who moved from a neighborhood that required a vehicle to run errands to one that made walking-errands convenient were significantly less likely to have high blood pressure than people who moved from one low-walkability neighborhood to another low-walkability neighborhood. Specifically, people who moved to a highly walkable neighborhood had a 54 percent lower risk of high blood pressure than those who moved to a more car-dependent neighborhood over 10 years of follow up

Pulmonary research: Global air quality guidelines could prevent 2. 1 million deaths ♦ Lung transplant survival rates good for cystic fibrosis patients ♦ Cure for debilitating heart and lung disease

Community acquired pneumonia increases long-term morbidity, mortality Having had community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) greatly increases the risk of long-term morbidity and mortality compared to the general population who have never had CAP, according to a new study from researchers in Canada, the longest and largest outcomes study of patients with CAP reported to date.

Lung transplant survival rates good for cystic fibrosis patients The five-year survival rate for Canadians with cystic fibrosis who have received a lung transplant is 67 percent, new research finds. Cystic fibrosis is an inherited chronic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system. A defective gene and its protein product cause the body to produce unusually thick, sticky mucus that clogs the lungs and leads to life-threatening lung infections, obstructs the pancreas and stops natural enzymes from helping the body break down and absorb food.

Breakthrough points to cure for debilitating heart and lung disease A protein that targets the effects of a faulty gene could offer the first treatment targeting the major genetic cause of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension.

Meeting global air quality guidelines could prevent 2. 1 million deaths per year Improving air quality could potentially avoid millions of pollution-related deaths each year. That finding comes from a team of environmental engineering and public health researchers who developed a global model of how changes in outdoor air pollution could lead to changes in the rates of health problems such as heart attack, stroke and lung cancer. The researchers were surprised to find the importance of cleaning air not just in the dirtiest parts of the world -- which they expected to find -- but also in cleaner environments like the United States, Canada and Europe