Active clinical trials for "Heart Diseases"

To determine the relation between cardiovascular disease risk factors and systemic markers of vascular inflammation in the Framingham Study cohort.

To investigate the relationship between life-stress factors associated with socioeconomic conditions and hypertension.

To study the genetic cause of low HDL-C, a risk factor for premature atherosclerotic vascular disease in patients with normal total cholesterol. The focus is primarily on the identification of a single mutation, as has been demonstrated in one family.

To quantify the role of dietary factors in the etiology of coronary heart disease by pooling data from 10 major prospective studies on diet and coronary heart disease.

When patients receive repeated blood transfusions the level of iron in the patient s blood can rise. When iron is processed in the body a protein known as hemosiderin can begin collecting in the organs. If too much hemosiderin collects in the organs they can begin to malfunction. This condition is called transfusional hemochromatosis. An organ of particular importance in transfusional hemochromatosis is the heart. Patients born with diseases requiring blood transfusions at birth begin to develop heart problems in their teens. These patients typically only live for 17 years. Adults that require transfusions can begin experiencing heart problems after 100-200 units of backed red blood cells. Deferoxamine (Desferal) is a drug that binds to iron and allows it to be excreted from the body. It is the only effective way to remove iron from patients who have been overloaded with iron because of multiple transfusions. Previous studies have lead researchers to believe that deferoxamine, when given as an injection under the skin (subcutaneous), can be delay or prevent heart complications. Researchers plan to continue studying patients receiving deferoxamine as treatment for the prevention of heart complications associated with repeated blood transfusions. In this study researchers will attempt; To determine if deferoxamine, given regularly, can indefinitely prevent the heart, liver, and endocrine complications associated with transfusional hemochromatosis To determine whether heart disease caused by transfusional hemochromatosis can be reversed by intensive treatment with deferoxamine.

Iron is involved in essential functions of the body. It allows the transport of oxygen in the blood, via hemoglobin, at the muscular level, via myoglobin, and it is also involved in cellular metabolism in general, in particular for the production of ATP at the mitochondrial level, within the cytochromes and iron-sulfur proteins of the respiratory chain. Recently, iron deficiency has been identified as an important prognostic factor in heart failure patients. Iron therapy improves symptoms and physical performances of heart failure patients, even in the absence of anemia. As a result, the correction of iron deficiency is now proposed as one of the therapies for heart failure. However, the pathophysiology of the association between cardiac dysfunction and iron deficiency is still poorly understood. The investigators previously developed a mouse model of iron deficiency without anemia, in which the investigators observed impaired physical performances, a decrease of left ventricular ejection fraction, and a decrease in mitochondrial complex I activity. These abnormalities were normalized after iron injection. These animal data suggest that iron deficiency is responsible for left ventricular dysfunction secondary to mitochondrial I complex abnormalities, and that iron therapy corrects them. Iron deficiency is very common in the preoperative period of cardiac surgery, affecting 40 to 50% of patients. During this surgery, it is possible to perform a myocardial biopsy without risk to the patient. The purpose of this study is to verify in patients requiring valvular heart surgery, if iron deficiency is responsible for a decrease in mitochondrial complex I activity and a decrease in cardiac function during the perioperative period, and to verify whether iron treatment improves these abnormalities.

The DELPhi system is a software device that is used for the noninvasive evaluation of brain plasticity and connectivity. The DELPhi software uses EEG and TMS devices as accessories. Standard electro-physiological acquisition is performed using TMS to evoke regional neuronal potentials measured as EEG data. TMS-EEG data is analyzed with regards to conventional, well established characteristics of neuronal network plasticity and connectivity.

The proposed study seeks to determine the incidence of dysphagia and vocal fold mobility impairment (VFMI) in individuals undergoing cardiothoracic surgical procedures. It also seeks to determine the impact of postoperative swallowing impairment on health-related outcomes.

Investigators would like to find out if a woman's exposure to Coxsackievirus has an effect or increase in incidence of babies being born with congenital heart disease(CHD)

The ability to quantify flow directly using through-plane phase contrast velocity mapping is a unique advantage of cardiovascular magnetic resonance and does not rely on the calculation from complex equations as echocardiography. The aim s is to study the role of cardiac MRI in the evaluation of valvular heart disease through quantification of the impact of valvular lesions upon cardiac function by accurate estimation of the left ventricular ejection fraction