40 Fun Facts About Cardiovascular Disease

Which blood thinner, prescribed to President Eisenhower after his heart attack, first went on sale as a rat poison?

Warfarin is named after WARF, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and grew out of research into spoiled sweet clover hay that was making cattle bleed.

Which physicist died in 1955 of a ruptured aortic aneurysm after refusing surgery to repair it?

Albert Einstein had the same aneurysm reinforced by surgeon Rudolph Nissen in 1948, a repair that held for seven years.

Takotsubo, the stress-triggered broken heart syndrome, is named after a Japanese trap for which sea creature?

Octopus pots have a round body and a narrow neck, the shape the heart's left ventricle balloons into during an attack. About 90% of patients are women.

The World Health Organization advises adults to eat under five grams a day of which staple?

Salt supplies sodium, and too much of it is linked to high blood pressure, stroke and kidney disease. Five grams is just under a teaspoon.

In the stroke warning acronym FAST, F is for face, A for arms and T for time; what does S stand for?

Speech that is slurred or hard to understand is the third warning sign. The acronym was created in the UK in 1998 to train ambulance staff.

A blood pressure reading such as 120 over 80 is measured in millimetres of which metal?

Mercury columns were the original gauges: a reading is the height the pressure can push the metal up a tube. The toxic devices are fading, but the unit remains.

The coronary arteries, which wrap around the heart and feed its muscle, are named after the Latin word for which object?

A crown is corona in Latin, a word borrowed from the Greek for a garland or wreath, and the arteries encircle the heart much as one would.

Which US president, found to have high blood pressure in 1944, died of a brain haemorrhage a year later?

Franklin Roosevelt complained of a sudden headache, slumped in his chair and never woke; the hospital tests a year earlier had also found narrowed coronary arteries.

Which explosive, an active ingredient of dynamite, has been prescribed since 1878 to relieve angina chest pain?

Nitroglycerin widens blood vessels, which eases the heart's workload. Physician William Murrell tried it after seeing amyl nitrite relieve chest pain.

Which garment gives its name to the effect of blood pressure reading higher in a clinic than at home?

A white coat on the doctor is blamed for the spike, yet the rise often comes with no racing pulse or other outward sign of nerves.

The stent, a tube that props open a narrowed artery, is named after a Victorian Englishman of which profession?

Dentist Charles Stent invented a compound for taking dental impressions in 1856. The first coronary stent was not implanted until 1986, in Toulouse.

Which Massachusetts town has hosted a heart study since 1948 that gave medicine the term risk factor?

Framingham signed up 5,209 adults at the start and is now following a third generation of participants.

Chest pain from a heart attack classically spreads to the jaw, the shoulder and which limb?

The left arm is the most common place for the pain to travel. Women are more likely than men to have no chest pain, and to feel neck pain or tiredness instead.

Which three-letter abbreviation names a blood clot in the leg, a risk after surgery or long-haul travel?

DVT, short for deep vein thrombosis, becomes life-threatening if the clot breaks free and lodges in an artery of the lungs, which is called a pulmonary embolism.

Which childhood illness, named after a Japanese paediatrician, can cause aneurysms in the arteries that feed the heart?

Kawasaki disease is the leading cause of acquired heart disease in children in developed countries. One tell-tale sign is a bright red strawberry tongue.

Rheumatic fever, which can permanently scar the heart valves, follows a streptococcal infection of which body part?

The throat infection is the familiar strep throat. Two to four weeks later the immune system's response to the bacteria turns on the body's own heart tissue.

Which inherited disorder makes people unusually tall with long limbs and fingers, and can dangerously weaken the aorta?

Marfan syndrome was first described in 1896 by French paediatrician Antoine Marfan, who had noticed the striking features of a five-year-old girl.

Chagas disease, which leads to heart disease in up to 45% of chronic cases, is spread by insects with which nickname?

Kissing bugs feed at night around the mouths and eyes of sleeping people. The illness was first described in 1909 by Brazilian physician Carlos Chagas.

Japanese biochemist Akira Endo found the first statin, a cholesterol-lowering drug, in which kind of organism?

A fungus named Penicillium citrinum, from the same genus as the penicillin mould, produced the compound. It was never marketed, but it led to every statin since.

Digoxin, a drug long used for heart failure and irregular heart rhythms, comes from which garden flower?

Foxglove was championed in 1785 by English doctor William Withering, who used it to treat dropsy, the swelling that comes with a failing heart.

Which breakfast fruit are people on certain statins told to avoid because it blocks the breakdown of the drug?

Grapefruit contains compounds that knock out an enzyme in the gut and liver, so far more of the drug reaches the blood. Lipitor is affected, while Crestor is not.

Which root, used to flavour sweets, raises blood pressure and lowers potassium when eaten in excess?

Liquorice owes the effect to glycyrrhizic acid, and it is a particular worry for people who already have high blood pressure or kidney disease.

Captopril, the first ACE inhibitor pill for high blood pressure, was modelled on the venom of which animal?

A pit viper from Brazil, the jararaca, has venom that makes blood pressure plunge. Researchers copied one of its peptides to create the drug in 1975.

Which condition, named after a French physician, turns the fingers pale and then blue in the cold?

Raynaud syndrome is a spasm of small arteries that cuts the blood flow to fingers and toes. Maurice Raynaud first described it in his 1862 doctoral thesis.

Which common condition, caused by weak one-way valves, leaves blood vessels in the legs bulging and twisted?

Varicose veins lie just under the skin and can leave the legs aching and heavy. Compression stockings, exercise and raising the feet all help.

Claudication, the cramping calf pain of peripheral artery disease, comes from a Latin verb meaning what?

To limp is claudicare in Latin. The pain comes on with walking, when narrowed arteries cannot feed the working muscle, and fades after a short rest.

Around 40% of babies born with which condition, the most common chromosomal disorder, have a congenital heart defect?

Down syndrome is caused by a third copy of chromosome 21. It also raises the risk of thyroid disease, epilepsy and leukaemia.

Which author of the 1977 bestseller The Complete Book of Running died of a heart attack while out jogging?

Jim Fixx was 52. His father had died of a heart attack at 43, and Fixx had been a heavy smoker before he took up running at 35.

Which Buffalo Bills safety's heart stopped in a 2023 game after a blow to the chest, an event called commotio cordis?

Damar Hamlin was revived on the field with CPR and a defibrillator. The blow has to land at a critical instant of the heartbeat to stop the heart.

Which term describes blood pressure that is abnormally low, generally a reading below 90 over 60?

Hypotension can bring dizziness and fainting, but with no underlying cause it is usually harmless, unlike its opposite, high blood pressure.

Atherosclerosis, the fatty clogging of artery walls, takes the first half of its name from the Greek for which food?

Gruel, athera in Greek, describes the soft, yellowish material at the core of a plaque. The process likely begins in childhood and stays silent for decades.

Which inherited heart muscle condition is the leading cause of sudden cardiac death in young athletes in the US?

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy thickens the heart muscle, stiffening the pumping chambers, and is the most common genetic cardiovascular disorder.

Which rapid, irregular beating of the heart's upper chambers is the most common serious abnormal heart rhythm?

Atrial fibrillation raises the risk of stroke, heart failure and dementia, which is why many people who have it are prescribed an anti-clotting medicine.

Which pregnancy disorder, arising after 20 weeks, is marked by new high blood pressure and often protein in the urine?

Pre-eclampsia can progress to seizures if left untreated, and women who have had it face a higher risk of heart disease and stroke later in life.

Which former US vice president lived for 20 months on an implanted heart pump before a 2012 transplant?

Dick Cheney's pump pushed blood in a steady stream instead of beats, so patients with such devices often have no pulse that can be felt. It was fitted in 2010 for worsening heart failure.

Which congenital heart condition, named after a French physician, can turn a crying baby blue?

Tetralogy of Fallot combines four heart defects and is the most common complex congenital heart defect. In 1888 Fallot himself called it the blue disease.

Which arteries run up either side of the neck to the brain, where a build-up of plaque can trigger a stroke?

Carotid narrowing often announces itself with a brief warning attack that passes, and a severe stroke may follow within the first two days.

Korotkoff sounds, the thumps listened for when taking blood pressure, are named after a physician from which country?

Russia's Nikolai Korotkov discovered the sounds in 1905. They appear and fade as a cuff around the arm is slowly deflated.

Which infection of the heart's inner lining, usually on the valves, is a known risk of injecting drugs?

Endocarditis can also begin when mouth bacteria enter the blood during a tooth extraction. Around 18% of patients die in hospital.

Stephen Hales, who made the first published measurement of blood pressure in 1733, worked in which profession?

Clergyman Hales slid fine tubes into the arteries of animals and measured how high the column of blood rose.