SCIENCE REPORT

Alcohol might help those diagnosed with heart failure

Patients who have been diagnosed with heart failure might live longer if they have a few alcoholic drinks a week, a new study suggests.

Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis studied 393 people, average age 79, who had heart failure.

The researchers found that those who never drank survived for an average of 2,640 days, or about seven years and three months, after a diagnosis. That was compared with 3,046 days for patients who had up to seven drinks a week, and 2,806 days for those who drank more than seven a week.

Several of the authors reported receiving funds from industry sources.

Heart attack or stroke could be early sign of cancer

A heart attack or stroke might be an early sign of cancer.

Researchers studied records of 374,331 Medicare beneficiaries who were given cancer diagnoses between 2005 and 2013. They matched them with an equal number of patients without cancer. Then they tracked heart attacks and strokes in both groups in the year before the cancer diagnosis.

In the first seven months, there was no difference between the groups. But after that, the risk of a cardiovascular event rose in patients who later would be diagnosed with cancer.

Those who received a cancer diagnosis were more than five times at risk of a heart attack or stroke about a month before the diagnosis.

The researchers speculated that cancer might disrupt the body’s blood system well before the disease is detectable, causing clots that lead to cardiovascular events.