View clinical trials related to Cardiovascular Disease.
Filter by:Background: - There has been little research on the long-term health effects from oil spills, even though at least 10 percent of all oil tanker spills between 1970 and 2009 have affected coastal populations. The Deepwater Horizon disaster, with its release of approximately 5 million barrels (~680,000 tons) of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, is far larger than any of the individual tanker spills. Given the magnitude of this spill and the scope of the potential exposures, including the 55,000 workers involved in clean-up efforts and countless residents of the affected areas, researchers are interested in monitoring Gulf clean-up workers to understand the adverse consequences of oil spills in general. - The Gulf Long-term Follow-up Study will investigate health effects associated with the clean-up activities following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010. More than 100,000 persons completed safety training in preparation for participation in clean-up activities related to the spill. Many of these individuals participated in active clean-up efforts, but others did not. Exposures among persons involved in clean-up range from negligible to potentially significant, especially for workers involved in tasks associated with direct exposure to crude or burning oil, or to chemical dispersants. However, prediction of adverse health effects is not possible because the long-term human health consequences of oil spills are largely unknown. In addition to the oil itself, the widespread economic and lifestyle disruption caused by the oil spill may contribute to mental health problems among this population. Objectives: - To investigate potential short- and long-term health effects associated with clean-up activities and exposures surrounding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Eligibility: - English-, Spanish-, and Vietnamese-speaking workers and volunteers at least 21 years of age engaged or potentially engaged in oil spill clean-up operations in the Gulf of Mexico, or who lived in affected areas (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida coastal regions). Design: - Participants will be divided into groups of those who performed oil-spill clean-up-related work ( exposed ) and those who did not engage in clean-up-related work ( unexposed controls). - Participants will be screened with a full medical history and physical examination, as well as an interview to determine the nature of their potential exposure. - Participants will provide blood, hair, toenail, urine, and saliva (spit) samples. Participants may also have a lung function exam. - Participants will have researchers collect dust from their homes by using wipes and special vacuum bags. - Participants will also provide detailed contact information, including their Social Security number, to be contacted in the future for long-term health follow-up appointments. These appointments will include 30-minute telephone interviews every 2 years....
There will be no significant differences in the efficacy and tolerability between the test and reference formulations of atorvastatin 20 mg in these Korean adults with primary hypercholesterolemia.
The objectives of this study are the following: 1) to determine the acute effect of whole grain barley on risk factors of cardiovascular disease compared to a diet low in whole grain, and 2) to compare the effects of whole grain barley to those of whole grain oats to determine if the response to these two grains is similar.
The purpose of this study is to test the effect of implementing new practice standards for electrocardiographic (ECG) monitoring on nurses' knowledge and skills, quality of care, and patient outcomes. The investigators hypothesize that increased knowledge and skills of nurses will lead to enhanced quality of care, which will result in improved outcomes for patients.
To evaluate the safety of a new bioresorbable (non-permanent) stent platform in native coronary arteries.
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in China. At the village level, strategies for the control of cardiovascular disease are mostly absent. National clinical guidelines for the management of hypertension and cardiovascular disease are rarely disseminated to, or implemented by, the village primary care providers. Salt reduction has greater potential in rural China than almost anywhere else in the world. Very high levels of salt consumption, very little use of processed food and most dietary salt deriving from home cooking makes the removal of salt from the diet easier, cheaper and more worthwhile than in almost any other setting. The two large-scale cluster-randomized controlled trials proposed here will precisely and reliably define the effect of two highly plausible intervention strategies on important clinical outcomes. The evidence provided by the project will form the basis for policy setting that has the potential to greatly reduce the occurrence of vascular disease in rural China and take an important step towards balancing the rural urban divide in health and healthcare.
This is a research study into the effects of three drugs used to treat HIV infection. Some drugs used to treat HIV have been associated with changes in blood fats such as cholesterol that could be harmful over the long-term, because these blood fat changes have been associated with a small, increased risk of heart disease and stroke in some studies of adults with HIV. Now that HIV can be controlled for long periods in most patients, and because heart disease is one of the biggest causes of illness and death in the general population, it is important to develop new HIV treatments that control HIV effectively but do not cause abnormal blood fats. Hypothesis: That Raltegravir will result in less post-prandial lipid disturbances than ritonavir-boosted darunavir.
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is an extremely common disorder in women of reproductive age. Diagnosis of PCOS is principally based on clinical and physical findings. Diagnostic criteria and PCOS definitions used by clinicians and researchers are almost as heterogeneous as the syndrome. Of those diagnosed with PCOS using the 2003 Rotterdam criteria, 61% fulfilled 1990 NIH criteria for unexplained hyperandrogenic chronic anovulation. The patient populations with the new phenotypes had less severe ovulatory dysfunction and less androgen excess than patients diagnosed using the 1990 NIH criteria. These findings might be common across all female populations with PCOS, whether in Oriental or Occidental countries. Data for clinical hyperandrogenism indicated that the prevalence of hirsutism in Taiwanese PCOS women is lower than that for Caucasians/Western women. The extent of metabolic abnormalities in women with PCOS may vary with phenotype, age and ethnicity. Obesity represents a major risk factor for metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance. Approximately 40-50% of all women with PCOS are overweight or obese. Obese subjects with PCOS had a higher risk of developing oligomenorrhea, amenorrhea and biochemical hyperandrogenemia than non-obese women with PCOS. Moreover, obese women with PCOS had significantly more severe insulin resistance, lower serum LH levels, and lower LH-to-FSH ratios than non-obese women with PCOS. PCOS women in Taiwan presented with higher LH-to-FSH ratio and lower insulin resistance than PCOS women in Western Countries. However, the average body mass index (BMI) was significantly lower in Taiwanese PCOS women than Western women, which might partially explain the difference between these two populations in terms of clinical and biochemical presentations. To further document the ethnic variation between women with PCOS in Taiwan and Western, the effect of obesity on the diagnosis and clinical presentations of PCOS-related syndromes should not be neglected in future studies. Therefore, the investigators plan to do this prospective study for evaluation the clinical and biochemical presentation of Taiwanese women with PCOS.
The purpose of this randomized clinical trial is to determine whether two low-intensity, technology based interventions, when compared to each other and to usual care, improve adherence to selected medications that are used to treat people with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes.
The role of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and the clinical benefit of lowering LDL-C in high-risk patients have both been well established. The key contribution of the intestine to whole body cholesterol homeostasis and thus to regulating plasma cholesterol concentrations has also been recognized over the last years. It is now clear that cholesterol homeostasis and hence plasma LDL-C concentrations are maintained by a fine-tuned balance between intestinal cholesterol absorption and endogenous cholesterol synthesis. Cholesterol is a highly hydrophobic molecule and for that reason, its absorption is almost entirely dependent on its solubilizing capacity in bile acid micelles within the intestine. Recent in vitro studies from our laboratory have shown that buttermilk, a unique by-product of butter manufacturing resulting from the churning of cream, has a strong inhibitory effect on cholesterol micelle solubility. This phenomenon is likely due to the presence of unique milk fat globule membrane (MFGM) fragments present in buttermilk that are produced during the manufacturing of dairy cream into butter. Most of the work done so far on the subject has focused on phospholipids purified from MFGM, while overlooking the complex and entire MFGM mixture of bioactive proteins and polar lipids found in buttermilk. To the best of our knowledge, no study has yet documented the impact of whole buttermilk on plasma cholesterol concentration in human. The general objective of this research project is to investigate for the first time the impact of buttermilk on plasma cholesterol and other risk factors for CVD in humans. More specifically, we propose to investigate the impact of buttermilk consumption on plasma LDL-C and other CVD risk factors as well as on plasma surrogates of cholesterol absorption and synthesis.