People take statin medications to fight high cholesterol. While these medications also may help those with high heart risks but not high cholesterol, statins are not always prescribed to those patients.

If your arteries have dangerous plaque build-up, determining your risks for stroke and heart attack can help guide self-care and medical care. Certain imaging tests may aid in predicting those risks.

Being overweight or obese can raise the risk for heart disease and stroke. While losing weight may help, shedding pounds can be hard. There may be other ways for overweight people to lower these risks.

When drugs aren't doing the trick to relieve pain from narrowed arteries, doctors may recommend procedures to restore blood flow. For diabetes patients undergoing one of these procedures, outcomes seem to have improved.

Though they share common risk factors, gum disease does not appear to cause heart disease or stroke. A new statement also reveals that treating gum disease is not proven to prevent stroke or plaque build up in the heart.

As patients are living longer, the need to assess heart treatments for the elderly has increased. Investigators have found that placing a stent in the neck's carotid artery of patients over the age of 70 is both safe and effective.

If you're feeling sleepy or irritable during the day, you may not be getting enough sleep. And not enough sleep could mean you're at higher risk for a range of heart problems.

Babies unable to grow to the size they're genetically supposed to reach suffer from intrauterine growth restriction, a risk factor for future cardiovascular problems.

A large population of seemingly healthy young adults appear to show discrete signs of heart disease even though they may not have any of the traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Inherited bleeding and clotting disorders are not well understood. Scientists hope that a study to create human platelet cells, which could aid chemotherapy patients in need of platelet transfusions, will provide insight into platelet function.