CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL & PREVENTION (August 25, 2020) – A CDC study published today that looked at more than 80,000 U.S. adults hospitalized with flu over eight flu seasons (2010-11 through 2017-18) found that sudden, serious heart complications were common and occurred in one out of every eight patients (~12% of patients).
The study looked at a range of sudden heart complications called “acute cardiac events” that resulted in the following:
- damage to the heart muscle,
- inflammation of the heart muscle,
- fluid or inflammation of the sac surrounding the heart, or
- weakening of the pumping function of the heart.
The most common acute cardiac events reported in the study were acute heart failure and acute ischemic heart disease. Acute heart failure is the sudden inability of the heart to pump enough blood to meet the body’s demands, while acute ischemic heart disease is a term that describes heart problems caused by narrowed or blocked heart arteries.
“This is an entirely new approach with no current treatments able to change scar in this way,” says Associate Professor James Chong who led the research. “By improving cardiac function and scar formation following heart attack, treatment with rhPDGF-AB led to an overall increase in survival rate in our study.”
Boomers Daily 