October 27th, 2011 by HarvardHealth in Research
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“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”
That oft-quoted passage doesn’t apply just to rending and sewing, weeping and laughing, or gathering stones together. Your body has its own set of “seasons,” many of them following the turn of a complete day. Taking some medications at specific times of the day can help them work better. A new study suggests that blood pressure drugs taken at night might improve blood pressure and prevent more heart attacks and strokes than taking the same medications during the day.
Spanish researchers tested Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
February 23rd, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Research
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Add coronary stent thrombosis to the list of cardiac events influenced by circadian rhythms, with more events occurring during the early morning hours and in a summertime window of late July and early August.
Coronary stent thrombosis joins several other adverse cardiac events that also follow a circadian pattern, such as stroke, unstable angina pectoris, acute myocardial infarction and sudden cardiac death, according to researcher published in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions.
Most studies that addressed circadian variations in cardiovascular disease were done before the advent of stents, so, researcher from Mayo Clinic-Rochester conducted a retrospective analysis of medical records and the clinic’s registry, finding 124 patients who presented with coronary stent thrombosis between February 1995 and August 2009.
Researchers determined the time of day, day of week, and season of year that the stent thrombosis occurred and recorded when potential triggers were present. In addition, the team categorized each stent thrombosis based on the number of days since the initial stenting procedure: early=0 to 30, late=31 to 360 days, very late=more than 360 days.
The association between the onset of stent thrombosis was lowest at 8 p.m. and highest at 7 a.m. (P=0.006). However, when the team divided the analysis into early, late, and very late stent thrombosis, only the association between early stent thrombosis and time of day remained significant (P=0.030, P=0.537, P=0.096, respectively). Day of week wasn’t associated, but stent thrombosis rates peaked between the end of July and the beginning of August (P=0.036). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
