Nutritionist Mohsen Meydani, director of the Vascular Biology Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston, Mass., led the research on the oat compounds, called avenanthramides. Meydani previously has shown that phenolic antioxidants in oats obstruct the ability of blood cells to stick to artery walls.

Chronic inflammation inside the arterial wall is part of the process that eventually leads to a disorder known as atherosclerosis. Meydani and colleagues have reported findings that suggest the avenanthramides of oats decrease the expression of inflammatory molecules. The study showed that forms of avenanthramides possess potential anti-inflammatory properties through inhibiting factors that are linked with activating proinflammatory cytokines. 

“Bevacizumab is a drug used to treat cancers and eye disorders by restricting the growth of abnormal blood vessels,” said Terence M. Davidson, MD, professor of surgery and director of the UC San Diego Nasal Dysfunction Clinic. “The experimental intranasal application of bevacizumab by injection or spray has produced excellent results for patients at UC San Diego Medical Center.”

HHT, also known as Osler Weber Rendu, is a genetic disease characterized by a malformation of the small blood vessels.

The study, appearing in the Lancet, found that non-hospitalized patients dealing with an IBD flare-up are 16 times more likely to suffer a blood clot in a vein than the general (non-hospitalized) population. That translates into about a one in 100 risk per person with IBD per year. Such clots, which often develop in the legs, sometimes travel to the lungs and can become life-threatening.

IBD refers to a group of conditions, including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, marked by chronic inflammation in the intestines, leading to symptoms like belly pain and diarrhea. And while medication can keep the disease at bay, flare-ups are common. Researchers suspect that the inflammation seen in IBD, plus the increased likelihood of infection among patients with the condition, is responsible for the higher blood clot risk.

“In the late 70s and early 80s, medical teams attempted to remove these lesions during a single surgery, frequently encountering catastrophic episodes of brain swelling,” said John C. Drummond, MD, professor and anesthesiologist at UC San Diego Medical Center. “Today, with a combination of embolization, the use of a medical coma, and staging shorter surgeries, patients experience consistently good outcomes.”

The brain lesion, called an arteriovenous malformation (AVM), ranges in size from less than one to 10 centimeters in diameter. The defect can also occur in the spinal cord, and affects more than 300,000 Americans per year. While many patients show no signs of the abnormality, more than 10 percent experience debilitating symptoms. The untreated lesion can be fatal.

“Exercise is a staple of healthy living,” notes senior author Zoltan Arany, MD, PhD, an investigator in BIDMC’s Cardiovascular Institute and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. “One of the many benefits of exercise, endurance exercise in particular, is the generation of new blood vessels in leg muscles.” Known as angiogenesis, this naturally occurring process comes to the rescue when an injury or artery blockage leaves normal tissue starved for blood.

PAD is a common circulatory problem in which narrowed arteries reduce blood flow to the limbs. The end result is leg pain primarily encountered while walking. More seriously, PAD is also likely to be a sign of widespread accumulation of fatty deposits in the arteries, which may be reducing blood flow to the heart and brain as well as to the legs.

Angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels, is strictly regulated by a number of molecules that serve to either promote or inhibit the process. Certain diseases are characterised by excessive or insufficient angiogenesis. The rapid growth of tumors, for example, is conditioned on the formation of new blood vessels to supply oxygen and nutrients, which explains why angiogenesis is accelerated in cancer patients.

“At present, there are five approved drugs for inhibiting formation of new blood vessels,” says research fellow Anna-Karin Olsson of the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology at Uppsala University, who headed the study. “All of these medications work in a similar way, by influencing the function of one of the agents that promotes angiogenesis. A problem with the medications is that the body develops resistance to them as treatment progresses. Improved knowledge about which molecules promote or inhibit the formation of blood vessels in the body, and the mechanisms by which they operate, is accordingly a research goal.”

Reliable assessment of the associations of major blood lipids and apolipoproteins with the risk of vascular disease is important for the development of screening and therapeutic strategies, according to background information in the article. “Expert opinion is divided about whether assessment of apolipoprotein AI (apo AI) and apolipoprotein B (apo B) should replace assessment of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and total cholesterol levels in assessment of vascular risk. Although there is agreement about the value of reducing low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C or, approximately analogously, non–high-density lipoprotein cholesterol [non–HDL-C]), uncertainty persists about the merits of modification or measurement of triglycerides or HDL-C,” the authors write.

John Danesh, F.R.C.P., of the Emerging Risk Factors Collaboration Coordinating Centre, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, and colleagues conducted a study to estimate of the associations of major lipids and apolipoproteins in relation to coronary heart disease (CHD) and ischemic stroke.

The anemia-reducing medications, known as erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (i.e., erythropoietin and darbopoietin) or ESAs, stimulate red blood cell production and are intended to reduce the number of blood transfusions required during chemotherapy. However, concerns about the risks of deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism (manifestations of venous thromboembolism) and mortality exist.

“This research answers important questions about outcomes of ESAs when used in long-term clinical practice with oncology patients,” said Dr. Hershman, the Florence Irving Assistant Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center, whose research is dedicated to examining cancer survivorship.

Reporting in the Oct. 16 issue of Cell, researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine find that when some cells in the mouse retina are not properly fed by blood vessels, they can remain alive for many months and can later recover some or all of their normal function, suggesting that similar conditions in people may also be reversible.

“This finding is intriguing,” says Jeremy Nathans, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of molecular biology and genetics, neuroscience and ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. “It suggests that neurons in the retina can survive for an extended period of time even though they have been functionally silenced.”

“With all three specialties involved in PAI procedures, there has been a significant increase of PAI which in certain locations has led to significant ‘turf wars’ as to who should perform them and who should not,” said Dr. Eslami.

“Using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample our research team reviewed 23,825 PAI cases (about 75 percent of the providers’ specialties) from 1998 to 2005,” add Dr. Eslami. “We found the market share for vascular surgeons increased from 27 percent to 43 percent, while the cardiologists’ share rose from 10 to 29 percent.