Hypertensive adults with low platelet count who took a combined daily pill of both enalapril and folic acid saw a 73 percent reduction in their risk of first stroke compared to patients who took only enalapril daily, according to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Cancer drops sparse chemical hints of its presence early on, but unfortunately, many of them are in a class of biochemicals that could not be detected thoroughly, until now. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have engineered a chemical trap that exhaustively catches what are called glycoproteins, including minuscule traces that have previously escaped detection.

People in chronic pain are some of the most difficult patients to treat. They have complex circumstances that medicine can't always remedy. Pain can be amplified, by depression and anxiety, genetics and quality of life. Genetics can also play a role in how people experience pain. Physicians are less prone to prescribe opioid medication to patients with long-term pain - but they need more treatment options.

Men who take once-daily aspirin have nearly double the risk of melanoma compared to men who are not exposed to daily aspirin, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. Women, however, do not have an increased risk in this large patient population. The study was published April 27 in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

A new research study by scientists in Australia and the US provides an explanation for why clinical trials of drugs reducing proteins in the brain that were thought to cause dementia and Alzheimer's have failed. The study has opened the way for potential new treatments with existing drugs. Published online in the journal Human Molecular Genetics, the researchers assembled evidence from a wide range of human studies and animal models of dementia-related diseases to show that inflammation is a major cause, not just a consequence.

Women are underrepresented in clinical trials for heart failure, coronary artery disease and acute coronary syndrome but proportionately or overrepresented in trials for hypertension, atrial fibrillation and pulmonary arterial hypertension, when compared to incidence or prevalence of women within each disease population, according to a study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Cocaine and other drugs of abuse hijack the natural reward circuits in the brain. In part, that's why it's so hard to quit using these substances. Moreover, relapse rates hover between 40 and 60 percent, similar to rates for other chronic conditions like hypertension and Type 1 diabetes. University of Pennsylvania behavioral pharmacologist and neuroscientist Heath Schmidt studies how long-term exposure to drugs such as cocaine, nicotine, and prescription opioids affects the brain and how these changes promote relapse in someone who has kicked the habit.