Heart Disease

One thing Chicken Little apparently didn't need to worry about was that he'd suffer a heart attack or stroke. New work out of the University of Pennsylvania shows that chickens and other birds do not share our vulnerability to heart disease. For humans, those diseases look like the price we pay to get a blood-clotting system that keeps us from bleeding to death every time we fumble with the kitchen knife. Chickens avoided this evolutionary trade-off by using a different blood-clotting system.

Cornering the market on misguided rage these days is the radical AIDS activist group Act Up, which has been holding demonstrations all over the country. Eight people were arrested in a clash with Philadelphia police last month during an Act Up protest staged around a visit by President Bush. When the group is practicing its particular brand of civil unrest, it has all the charm and educational benefit of a car wreck - people stop to look, are appalled and go away having learned nothing.

A 59-year-old man stacking concrete blocks in this week's torrid heat to fulfill a community service requirement died of a heart attack, Delaware County officials said. David Marvel of Essington was pronounced dead at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital Tuesday after collapsing at a construction site at the Delaware County Emergency Training Center in Darby Township. Medical examiner Fredric Hellman said heat was not a factor in the death because Marvel's body temperature was not elevated.

When Rachel Dunn was born, doctors and her mother, Judy, a labor and delivery nurse, knew something was wrong. Rachel had only half a heart and could not get oxygen into her lungs. She would need a heart transplant. After going to numerous hospitals specializing in heart disease and seeing specialists for six years, Rachel received a new heart on June 12, 1999. Yesterday, the 9-year-old from Haddon Heights joined about 4,000 business and civic leaders and residents at the American Heart Association's 2000 Burlington-Camden County American Heart Walk at Cooper River Park.

There is a growing medical emergency in America that is being overlooked at the risk of women's lives. The widespread perception that heart disease essentially affects males increasingly leaves females at risk. As women show up at the nation's hospital emergency rooms complaining of chest discomfort, they are sometimes examined - and too often treated - for a variety of non-cardiac illnesses, leaving unexplored the possibility that they might have suffered a heart attack. In most cases, men who complain of chest discomfort are routinely checked for heart disease, while women are examined for relatively minor illness such as gall bladder, epigastric ailments including indigestion, stomach ulcers and the like.

I've never been one of those pathetic bald guys lamenting his follicular shortcomings and engaging in probing self-analysis about the benefits of Rogaine vs. the Hair Club for Men. But now, like a martini in a James Bond movie, I'm shaken. See, if you believe the findings in a recent study, bald men apparently have a lot more to worry about than date-night rejection and wind chill. A report published in the last issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine found that bald men have a greater risk of heart problems than their counterparts who hold onto their hair.

An 81-year-old woman with dementia who was found dead after walking off from a Bensalem assisted-living facility earlier this week died from heart disease. "It was a natural death," Bucks County Coroner Joseph Campbell said yesterday. Betty Trainer had been missing since a faulty smoke alarm led to an evacuation of NewSeasons Assisted Living Communities at Hill House, 6400 Hulmeville Rd., about 11 a.m. Sunday. She was noticed missing about noon. After an extensive search, her body was found at 6:55 p.m. Monday, about two miles from Hill House.

Jennifer Loftus did everything she could think of to bring down her high cholesterol. But nothing - not diet, not exercise, not even natural supplements - helped her control the problem. After six years of trying, the otherwise healthy 36-year-old nurse from Marlton was ready to take her doctor's advice: start a lifelong, daily regimen of cholesterol-lowering statins. It's what millions of Americans do - turning statins into huge moneymakers for drug companies. The cholesterol-lowering drugs have been shown in clinical studies to reduce the risk of death, heart attack and other problems in patients with cardiovascular disease, but it is less clear that they help patients such as Loftus who don't yet have heart disease.

Every time Ed Manfield ran or walked up a steep hill or tried to do something strenuous, he felt pains in his chest. He ignored it for a while - how could a guy in his mid-30s be having heart trouble? And besides, he had no particular risk factors: He didn't smoke, he drank little, his cholesterol was reasonable, and at 125 pounds, he was hardly overweight for a man his size. But then the pains began recurring so regularly that Manfield decided he'd better check it out. At 37, Manfield had quadruple-bypass surgery.

The cost of caring for dementia patients has reached $109 billion annually, exceeding that for heart disease and cancer, and will double by the time the youngest baby boomers reach their 70s, according to a study. Dementia is characterized by a group of symptoms that prevent people from carrying out the tasks of daily living. Reduced mental function makes it impossible for them to do things like keep track of medications or finances. In more severe cases, patients lose the ability to handle basic tasks like bathing and dressing.