Hypertensive patients who had periventricular white matter abnormalities progress from one brain scan to the next showed a six-fold increased risk of mild cognitive impairment, researchers reported Jan. 4 in Hypertension.

The Mediterranean diet nudged the DASH diet out of the top spot for the best overall diet of 2019 in rankings released Jan. 2 by U.S. News and World Report. Those two approaches shared the No. 1 billing last year.

Patients with diabetes and peripheral artery disease (PAD) are significantly more likely than nondiabetics with PAD to die from cardiovascular causes or have a heart attack or stroke, according to a subanalysis of the EUCLID trial.

Omron Healthcare opened its latest product, a wearable blood pressure cuff that dually acts as a smartwatch, to presales Dec. 20 ahead of the device’s official launch in January 2019.

A Singapore-based research team is cautioning diabetics to be mindful of what apps, if any, they’re using to manage their condition after an analysis found the majority of such aids lack the ability to effectively monitor a patient’s diet, activity, medications, glucose and insulin.

The impressive blood pressure reductions seen among hypertensive black men participating in a barbershop-based intervention were sustained through one year, according to a follow-up study published Dec. 17 in Circulation.

A recent analysis of last year’s FOURIER trial has found evolocumab, a PCSK9 inhibitor developed to treat hyperlipidemia, can robustly reduce low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) in patients without any major concern for individual-level variability in response.

Questioning older patients about their weight earlier in life could be a low-tech, low-cost way to better predict a person’s future risk of heart disease, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.