Cholesterol Drugs Cut Clot Risk

Tennis star calls blood clot, hematoma 'extremely hard, disappointing'

(NEWSER) - Serena Williams' tennis career is on hold indefinitely following a series of health scares she calls "extremely hard ... and disappointing." News surfaced yesterday that Williams suffered a pulmonary embolism in February and then, more recently, a hematoma; she is now recuperating at home. But Williams has not played tennis since she won Wimbledon last summer, because shortly after that she stepped on broken glass and cut tendons in her right foot. Now it is not clear when she will be able to return to the game, the Chicago Tribune reports. More»

Tennis star gets emergency treatment for resulting hematoma

(NEWSER) - Tennis star Serena Williams is undergoing treatment for a pulmonary embolism she suffered last week, People reports. The blood clot in her lungs was discovered when she returned to LA, after receiving treatment in New York for an injured foot. She underwent emergency treatment Monday for a hematoma, says her rep, which she suffered as a result of the treatment for the embolism. Click here for more. More»

Researchers identify new virus in majority of patients

(NEWSER) - There may be hope for the 4 million Americans suffering from the baffling ailment known as chronic fatigue syndrome: A new study firms up the theory that it's caused by a virus, raising the prospect of the first effective treatment. Researchers say they've identified a mouse-related retrovirus in the vast majority of patients, and they think that drugs currently used to treat HIV (an unrelated retrovirus) might help, reports the Wall Street Journal . More»

100,000 trauma patients could benefit

(NEWSER) - A drug used to slow bleeding during surgery could save the lives of scores of trauma patients if used in emergency rooms, a new study suggests. UK researchers found that the drug tranexamic acid reduced bleeding deaths among trauma patients by a sixth, HealthDay reports. As 600,000 such patients bleed to death every year worldwide, "if you could reduce that by a sixth, you've saved 100,000 lives in one year," says the lead researcher. "This is one of the cheapest ways ever to save a life." More»

(NEWSER) - Heart attack survivors who eat chocolate after recovering are much less likely to suffer a recurrence than people who abstain, AFP reports. People who eat at least two servings a week are three times less likely to die from heart disease than those who don’t consume chocolate. And the more chocolate, the greater the benefit. “It seems that antioxidants in cocoa are a likely candidate,” the co-author of a recent study says. More»