If you know the story, you know the stats—the eponymous character of Dr. Seuss’s "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" starts the tale with a heart “two sizes too small” and ends it with one three times larger, thanks to Cindy Lou Who and her friends.

Commonly prescribed analgesic drugs, including opiates and certain antidepressants, could be doing more harm than good, according to a study published in PLOS One this week. Not only can these addictive pain medications cause sedation, disordered breathing and accidental overdoses, but they reflect poorly on a patient’s cardiometabolic profile and increase risks of developing obesity and hypertension.

Patients who receive target or near-target doses of evidence-based medicine (EBM) are more likely to continue working after a heart failure hospitalization, according to a study of Danish individuals published Dec. 6 in JACC: Heart Failure.

Hot flashes—especially those accompanied by night sweats—could be not only a routine symptom of menopause but also a precursor to diabetes, according to a study published this week in Menopause, the journal of the North American Menopause Society (NAMS).

More than one in six patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD) who undergo revascularization procedures to restore blood flow to blocked arteries are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days, according to research published Dec. 5 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

PLAINSBORO, N.J., Dec. 5, 2017 — Novo Nordisk today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved its New Drug Application (NDA) for OZEMPIC® (semaglutide) injection 0.5 mg or 1 mg, a once-weekly glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) receptor agonist indicated as an adjunct to diet and exercise to improve glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes.

Damage inflicted during non-cardiac surgery can reach heart cells and significantly raise a patient’s risk of mortality for up to one year after the procedure, according to research published this week in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

New-generation devices have made transcatheter aortic valve replacements (TAVRs) easier to perform in patients with pure native aortic regurgitation (AR), suggests a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.