Health Highlights: March 29, 2008

New Test Recommended to Determine Cardiovascular Disease Risk

The way doctors treat patients at risk for cardiovascular disease may change after Friday's release of new guidelines from the American Diabetes Association and the American College of Cardiology.

The guidelines say an additional test should be added to the standard cholesterol test used to determine cardiovascular disease risk. The guidelines endorse the use of advanced lipoprotein testing by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) as a more accurate method to determine risk and to check whether LDL ("bad") cholesterol-lowering therapies are having an effect in patients.

NMR lipoprotein testing measures the number of LDL particles, which carry cholesterol through the body, rather than cholesterol levels alone. Studies have shown that it's the number of lipoprotein particles present in the blood, not the amount of cholesterol carried by these particles, that form blockages inside arteries.

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Stroke Hospitalizations Higher Among U.S. Blacks

Black Americans and people living in the Southeast have the highest rates of stroke hospitalizations among Medicare beneficiaries in the United States, says a report released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The report -- Atlas of Stroke Hospitalizations Among Medicare Beneficiaries -- also found that a large number of beneficiaries live in counties where there is no access to care, or inadequate choices for emergency care when they suffer a stroke.

About 21 percent of counties had no hospital, 31 percent had a hospital without an emergency department, and 77 percent had a hospital with no neurology services.

The atlas provides county-level maps of stroke hospitalizations for blacks, whites and Hispanics. It showed the that stroke hospitalization rate for blacks is 27 percent higher than for the U.S. population in general, 30 percent higher than for whites, and 36 percent higher than for Hispanics.

"The atlas highlights that where you live can determine how you live, regarding your ability to take part in activities that reduce your risk of stroke," study lead author Michele Casper, an epidemiologist at the CDC's Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention, said in a prepared statement.

"Examples of community conditions that can influence a person's risk for stroke include the availability of affordable healthy food, safe options for physical activity, access to high quality health care, and anti-smoking legislation and polices," Casper said.