Oral hormone therapy may benefit heart health in menopausal women. A new analysis of data from the Women’s Health Initiative found that estrogen-based oral hormone therapy had a long-term beneficial effect on biomarkers of cardiovascular health, including cholesterol.

Henry Daniell of the School of Dental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and collaborators found that medications commonly prescribed for the treatment of hypertension have a negative impact on the same pathway they target to lower blood pressure. Daniell says that when trying to lower blood pressure “you don’t want to inhibit a key cardioprotective enzyme, ACE2, and you don't want to increase the angiotensin II pool. And here we observed both.”

Among adults ages 18-49 (median age of 41 years) who were born with a hole in the upper chambers of their heart known as patent foramen ovale (PFO), strokes of unknown cause were more strongly associated with nontraditional risk factors, such as migraines, liver disease or cancer, rather than more typical factors such as high blood pressure.

Researchers at UCL have tested a new scoring system to measure the risk of stroke in patients with narrowed arteries due to atherosclerosis, which could prevent unnecessary surgeries and stents.