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Replacing or adding wiring increases the risk of major complications for patients having surgery to replace a pacemaker or other heart rhythm-stabilizing device, a new study finds.

U.S. researchers analyzed complication rates among patients enrolled in the REPLACE prospective multicenter registry who underwent replacement of a pacemaker, implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), or cardiac resynchronization (CRT) generator. One group of patients required no new wiring while the other group did.

Major complications occurred in 15.3 percent of the 713 patients who needed wiring. The highest rate of major complications occurred in patients whose replacement procedure required a lead to connect a CRT generator to the left ventricle. Minor complications occurred in 7.6 percent of the wiring patients, said the University of Washington, Seattle researchers.

The average age of the patients needing wiring was 69.5 years at the time of enrollment. Of that group, 75.9 percent were male, 40.1 percent had previously suffered a heart attack, 30.4 percent had diabetes, and 55.7 percent had serious congestive heart failure.

The study was to be presented Sunday at the American Heart Association’s meeting in Orlando, Fla.

A moderate-fat diet may work better than a low-fat regimen for people suffering from metabolic syndrome, a collection of conditions putting them at higher risk for cardiovascular disease, new research finds.

“This is a good study that essentially confirms that the current recommendations are appropriate,” said Alice Lichtenstein, a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association (AHA). “Since 2000, the AHA has been recommending not a low-fat diet, but one that is low in saturated fats and trans fatty acids.”

People with metabolic syndrome are glucose-intolerant, meaning they can’t process blood sugar well. Low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets exacerbate this condition, Lichtenstein explained.

To be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, you must have three or more of the following risk factors for heart disease: belly fat, high triglycerides, low good cholesterol, high blood sugar and high blood pressure.

The study was among several to be presented Monday at the AHA’s annual meeting in Orlando, Fla. Researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle randomized 71 men and women with metabolic syndrome into one of two diet arms, the first made up of 40 percent fat, 45 percent carbohydrate and 15 percent protein (the moderate-fat diet) and the other, the low-fat diet, containing 20 percent fat, 65 percent carbs and 15 percent protein. Saturated fat content was about 8 percent in each, and each had about the same amount of fiber.

Levels of LDL (or “bad”) cholesterol fell 3.4 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) on the low-fat diet compared with 11.6 mg/dL on the moderate-fat plan. HDL (or “good”) cholesterol also fell, by 4.9 mg/dL on the low-fat plan and by 1.9 mg/dL on the other.

C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of inflammation linked to heart disease, fell more in the low-fat group than in the moderate-fat group (0.82 mg/L versus 0.63 mg/L), but the authors considered it a good drop in both cases.

While triglycerides, another measure of heart health, increased 11.1 mg/dL on the low-fat diet, they dropped 28.6 mg/dL on the other plan.

Experts familiar with the study aren’t surprised by the findings. “This sort of falls within the boundaries of what we used to call the Atkins diet, which was a high-lipid and low-carb diet. Normally this kind of diet suppresses appetite, improves diabetes,” said Dr. Alfred Bove, president of the American College of Cardiology. “This diet looks like it does a good job of altering the negative metabolic effects of early diabetes or high carbohydrate stimulation,” he said.

“Much of this we’ve known before, but the idea is that a moderate-fat diet is something most people can tolerate,” Bove said. “It probably affects the way insulin is released because if you have a lot of carbohydrates in the diet, you tend to generate a lot of insulin, and insulin is the hormone that lowers blood sugar,” Bove explained. “In addition to lowering blood sugar, it also increases appetite so a lot of people on high-carb diets are restimulated to eat more.”

Another study found yet more evidence to recommend the famed DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet, an eating plan that has been found to lower blood pressure. DASH calls for a diet high in fruits and veggies and low in total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol. Red meat and sweets are limited as well.

This study showed that the diet lowered coronary heart disease risk for a decade by 18 percent compared with people eating as usual and 11 percent compared with people in a fruit- and vegetable-rich program.

“We took our data and plugged it into the Framingham risk equation used to estimate heart disease risk and found a 20 percent reduction in risk of heart disease,” said study senior author Dr. Lawrence Appel, professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore. “We don’t have a 40,000-person randomized trial but, next to that, this is probably one of the best analyses to show that the DASH diet should reduce heart disease as well as blood pressure.”

Although the DASH diet is recommended to reduce blood pressure, there had been some “quirks” in previous data leading people to question the program’s net effect, Appel said.

A third study confirmed that even small helpings of fruits and veggies can boost your health.

In a Columbia University Medical Center study of 501 patients, just one extra serving of fruits or vegetables was linked with lower levels of both CRP and cholesterol. And adding another gram per day of omega-3 fatty acids, found in fish as well as plant-based oils, also was associated with a drop in CRP levels.

Lowering intake of saturated and trans fats meant reductions in both total and LDL cholesterol, the researchers, led by Dr. Lori Mosca, found.

And more calories from alcohol seemed to move HDL cholesterol levels down, although other measures did not change.

Think that a drink or two a day help keep your mind sharp into older age? Researchers from the United Kingdom may have poked a hole into that idea.

Dr. Claudia Cooper, at University College London, and colleagues note in a study that moderate drinkers - generally that’s two drinks a day for men and one for women - tend to have less forgetfulness and better mental skills as they age.

However, moderate drinkers also tend to have social, economic, and educational advantages that help them amass greater thinking skills over time.

A report by Cooper’s team in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, suggests that it’s these advantages - and not moderate drinking itself - that are responsible for the benefits.

Cooper’s team evaluated social, economic, and physical factors, plus thinking skills, in 1735 men and women 60 to 74 years old. Most - about 87 percent - of the participants reported drinking moderately or abstaining. The rest had histories that suggested problem drinking, and were excluded from the study.

They tested how well the participants could read words pronounced differently from how they are spelled, which indicates how much of their early-learned reading skills each retained into older age.

It’s also a skill that isn’t lost until mental function declines a great deal, Cooper told Reuters Health by email, which makes it a good indicator of previously obtained thinking skills.

When Cooper’s team only took social and economic factors into account, they saw an association between moderate alcohol consumption and greater thinking abilities, similar to findings reported in earlier studies.

But when they allowed for current thinking skills, and the fact that participants with greater physical health were also more likely to drink more, the association between moderate drinking and current thinking skills disappeared.

The authors note that the American Heart Association recently warned against putting too much stock in the link between moderate drinking and better thinking skills, and that more than three drinks per day are linked to a variety of medical conditions such as heart disease and stroke.

People who suffer migraines have more than double the risk of ischemic stroke, and the risk is especially high in women, a new study has found.

Ischemic stroke, the most common type of stroke, occurs when blood supply to the brain is cut off by plaque accumulation or a blood clot.

In this study, researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine reviewed the findings of 21 studies that included a total of 622,381 men and women, aged 18 to 70, in Europe and North America. Those with migraines were 2.3 times more likely than people without migraines to suffer ischemic stroke. The risk was 2.5 times higher for migraine sufferers who experienced aura (visual disturbances such as flashing lights, zigzag lines and blurred vision), and for women experiencing aura, 2.9 times higher.

The study was to be presented Monday at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.

The findings reinforce the link between migraine and stroke and also correct some discrepancies in previous analyses that yielded mixed results, according to Hopkins cardiologist and senior study investigator Dr. Saman Nazarian.

Nazarian said nearly 1,800 articles have been written about the relationship between migraine and stroke, but the Hopkins review is believed to be the largest of its kind and was more selective, including only studies that used similar designs and groups of people.

“Identifying people at highest risk is crucial to preventing disabling strokes. Based on this data, physicians should consider addressing stroke risk factors in patients with a history or signs of light flashes and blurry vision associated with severe headaches,” Nazarian said in a Hopkins news release.

There are a number of migraine prevention and treatment options, including smoking cessation, taking medications to lower blood pressure or taking blood-thinning drugs such as aspirin, Nazarian added. For women with migraines, additional options include discontinuing use of birth control pills or stopping hormone replacement therapy.