Cardiovascular HealthMar 15, 2026
If you've heard about Leqvio (inclisiran), a new cholesterol drug that only requires two injections a year, you might be wondering: does it actually prevent heart attacks and strokes? The honest answer is that we don't fully know yet. The drug dramatically lowers LDL cholesterol, and that's well-established. But larger trials proving it prevents cardiovascular events are still underway, with key results expected in 2026 and beyond.
Here's what this means for you: Leqvio is genuinely promising based on the science of how it works and early signals from clinical trials. But if you're considering it, you should understand both what we know for sure and what remains unproven.
Lab TestingMar 15, 2026
When your doctor orders routine blood work, the test results often include a section on proteins, with two main components: albumin and globulin. The ratio of albumin to globulin, known as the A/G ratio, is one of the most telling markers in standard blood chemistry. While simple in calculation, this number carries profound clinical significance, serving as a window into nutritional health, inflammation, immune function, and the prognosis of several serious diseases.
Cardiovascular HealthMar 15, 2026
If you have heart disease and you're already taking a statin, you might wonder whether adding another cholesterol medication could meaningfully protect you from a future heart attack or stroke. Repatha (evolocumab) is one such drug, and we now have some of the longest follow-up data available for any newer cholesterol treatment.
In people with existing heart disease who are already on statins, Repatha cuts LDL cholesterol (the "bad" kind) by about 60% and reduces the risk of major cardiovascular events by 15-20%. The protection appears to grow stronger over time, with up to 8 years of data now showing a 23% lower risk of dying from heart-related causes for those who started the drug earlier. This article will help you understand who benefits most, what the actual numbers mean for individuals, and what we still don't know.
NeurologyMar 15, 2026
The single most useful distinction between Bell's palsy and stroke comes down to your forehead. Bell's palsy paralyzes the entire side of the face, forehead included, so you can't wrinkle that side or fully close the eye. Stroke typically spares the forehead, affecting mainly the lower face around the mouth.
That one detail matters enormously because these two conditions need completely different treatments on completely different timelines. Bell's palsy calls for early steroids. Stroke is a time-sensitive emergency. Getting the wrong one can mean getting the wrong care.
Cardiovascular HealthMar 13, 2026
Autopsy and imaging studies find atherosclerotic lesions in the thoracic aorta in the majority of adults. Most of them had no idea anything was building up. Atherosclerosis of the aorta, the progressive accumulation of fatty, inflammatory plaque inside the wall of the body's largest artery, is one of the most common vascular conditions in existence. It is also one of the quietest.
That silence is the problem. By the time aortic atherosclerosis causes symptoms, it has often already contributed to a stroke, an aneurysm, or a clot that traveled somewhere it shouldn't. Understanding where this disease starts, how it progresses, and what actually drives it gives you a real chance to intervene before it reaches that point.
Cardiovascular HealthMar 13, 2026
After a major heart attack, a single stroke volume measurement helps predict cardiovascular death within a year, and it does this independently of left ventricular ejection fraction, the metric most people associate with heart health. In patients with high stroke volume after an anterior heart attack, the negative predictive value for cardiovascular death at 12 months is approximately 99%. If stroke volume is preserved, the chance of dying from cardiac causes in the following year is vanishingly small.
Yet most patients have never heard of stroke volume. It rarely surfaces in everyday health conversations the way blood pressure or cholesterol does. Recent clinical evidence, though, makes a strong case that it belongs front and center in cardiovascular risk assessment, from the ICU to routine outpatient follow-up.
