geoffrey modest medical blogs

  a recent study found (again) that racial disparities are associated with stress, chronic inflammation and increased mortality (see  racial disparities stress and mortality JAMA2026  in dropbox, or doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.54701) Details : -- The St Louis Personality and Aging Network recruited 1554 participants who lived in the metropolitan area of St Louis, Missouri. Participants were required to have a mailing address to permit longitudinal follow-up and sixth grade reading to facilitate understanding the consent form.  this was a longitudinal cohort study from 2007 to 2011; d ata were analyzed from April to September 2025. -- A lifespan cumulative stress factor was used to assess childhood maltreatment, lifetime trauma exposure, research assistant-verified stressful life events, major experiences of discrimination, and indices of socioeconomic status -- 505 Black participants (32.5% of the group) and 1049 White participants  (67.5%)  were ...

  secondary analysis of a large trial of patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction found that a predictive model (PREDICT-HFpEF) was quite accurate in predicting actual events that occurred (see  chf PREDICT finerenone study JAMAcardiol2025 , or doi:10.1001/jamacardio.2025.0025)   Details : -- 6001 patients were enrolled in the FINEARTS study that found that finerenone, a nonsteroidal mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist that is more selective than spironolactone, had the same benefit as spironolactone in patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), reducing the rate of unplanned hospital admissions or urgent visits for heart failure by 16% over placebo, independent of the use of SGLT-2 inhibitors:  https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2407107 --the FINEARTS study was performed across 653 sites in 37 countries in adults who were at least 40 years old and had symptomatic heart failure; left ventri...