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Health Check: Daily 4-in-1 pill protects the heart

Magazines & Reviews

hand holding a capsule

2019/08/28 GMT

Daily 4-in-1 pill protects the heart

BBC World Service - Health Check, Daily 4-in-1 pill protects the heart

Is a ‘polypill’ the answer to reducing heart attacks and strokes worldwide?

Polypill study in Iran; Statins and muscle pain; Venezuelan doctors in Chile; Athletic teeth; Risk-taking and the fluctuating brain; Tattoo allergies

Should everyone over 55 years old be taking a daily ‘polypill’ to cut their risk of heart attacks and strokes?  The first really large trial of this preventative approach to cardiovascular disease found positive results.  This was a study involving almost 7,000 people between the ages of 55 and 70 in rural Iran who were followed for five years.  Heart attacks and strokes were reduced by about 30 per cent.  Claudia talks to Professor Reza Malekzadeh of the Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Professor Tom Marshall of the University of Birmingham and Professor Anushka Patel of University of New South Wales in Australia.

Thousands of Venezuelan doctors have fled the economic troubles and security issues in their home country and moved to Chile.  The Chilean government welcomes them to make up for the short-fall of native doctors, but some Chilean doctors are hostile.  Jane Chambers reports.

Why do we make risky decisions one day and play safe the next?  An experiment at University College London comes up with a surprising explanation.  Claudia talks to UCL neuroscientist Robb Rutledge.

BBC News correspondent James Gallagher joins Claudia to talk about why the cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins sometimes cause muscle pain: why many elite athletes have bad teeth: and the discovery that allergies caused by tattoos may be caused by tiny fragments of tattoo needle lodged in the skin. 


(Photo caption: Hand holding a capsule - credit: Getty Images) 


Health Check was presented by Claudia Hammond


Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker

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