geoffrey modest medical blogs

  A new study confirmed that more intensive lipid-lowering led to atherosclerotic plaque regression in patients who had not been on statins before: see statin intensive plaque regression JAMANetwork2026 in dropbox, or doi:10.1001/jamacardio.2026.4788 Details: --this study was a prespecified analysis of the FLOWPROMOTE study, a randomized clinical trial performed in 3 Danish hospitals that had significant experience in the conduct of coronary CTA (coronary computed tomography angiography) as well as FFR-CT (flow fractional reserve)     -- there were initial studies at the time of diagnosis for coronary CTA which was then repeated at 9 and 18 months     -- the goal of this study was to assess the association between achieved LDL cholesterol levels and atherosclerotic plaque regression    this study was done from May 2020 to October 2022, with analyses from February 2025 to January 2026     -- 104 patients with newly diagnosed sta...

   a recent study found that high dose flu vaccine in older adults was associated with of a decrease in a wide array of severe cardiovascular and respiratory outcomes, including hospitalization for heart failure: see flu vaccine high dose dec card dz Circ2026 in dropbox, or DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.125.077801 Details: -- this study was a prespecified secondary analysis of the unblinded FLUNITY-HD (Pooled Analysis of Methodologically Harmonized Pragmatic Randomized Trials of High-Dose vs. Standard-Dose Influenza Vaccine Against Severe Clinical Outcomes), which had individual-level pooled data sets integrating two methodologically harmonized (ie similar approaches), pragmatic, individually randomized trials conducted in Denmark and Spain, to assess the relative vaccine effectiveness of the high-dose inactivated influenza vaccine (HD-IIV) versus the standard-dose inactivated influenza vaccine (SD-IIV) against severe cardiovascular and respiratory outcomes (for the FLUNITY-HD ...