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A research team led by investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and collaborators has shown, for the first time, that it may be possible to nonsurgically treat or even prevent the damage to a major heart valve that often occurs after a heart attack. In their report published in the  Journal of the American College of Cardiology , the investigators -- including co-senior authors at Boston Children's Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital -- describe how treatment with the antihypertension drug losartan reduced mitral valve damage in an animal model of heart attack. This sort of damage typically occurs in 25 percent of heart attack patients and can lead to heart failure and an increased risk of death. "Our study supports a new concept transforming how we think about heart valves," says Robert Levine, MD, of the Heart Valve Program and the Cardiac Ultrasound Laboratory in the Corrigan Minehan Heart Center at MGH, co-senior author of the report. ...

oung adults, particularly men, lag behind middle-aged and older adults in awareness and treatment of high blood pressure, putting this population at an increased risk for heart attack and stroke, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal  Hypertension . High blood pressure is a leading risk factor for heart attack and stroke and is also a significant public health burden, costing the United States about $110 billion in direct and indirect costs in 2015, according to American Heart Association estimates. American Heart Association guidelines define blood pressure as normal at less than 120/80 and high blood pressure as 140/90 or above. "While hypertension awareness, treatment and control have improved overall since the early 2000s, all three remain worse in young adults -- those aged 18-39," said senior study author Andrew Moran, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. The study, based on ...