Harvard Health Content API

In a 2024 study by Harvard researchers, people who reported feeling persistently lonely had a 56% higher risk of experiencing a stroke compared with people who did not report feelings of loneliness.

High levels of lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a)—a variant of LDL (bad) cholesterol— may triple the risk of a heart attack, even among healthy people with no other known risks for heart disease.

Following a Mediterranean eating pattern is linked to longer life—a finding at least partly explained by such heart-related improvements as decreases in body mass index, inflammation, triglyceride-rich lipoproteins, and insulin resistance.

Mobile ECG devices are small, handheld devices that people can use to record a simple ECG at home. They are designed to detect heart rhythm disorders such as atrial fibrillation.

Getting an electrocardiogram (ECG) prior to undergoing noncardiac surgery should be the exception rather than the rule. About half of surgeries are low-risk and pose very little danger for the heart. Asking about a person’s symptoms during physical activity—for example, whether they can walk up a flight of stairs without feeling winded—is a better gauge of their risk than the findings from an ECG. But presurgical ECGs make sense for older, inactive people with heart disease. The results can reveal signs of reduced blood flow to the heart or an unstable electrical heart rhythm that may require treatment before surgery.