Two News Items

Hi folks -- just a few news items to ponder:

* NPR's Morning Edition (yes, I know we're in "All Things Considered" time now, it's been busy today) had a piece on how women's hearts are different from men's.

Surprisingly, it's not that women's hearts are cold and dark, but rather that heart disease develops differently in women and men, and shows up differently on angiograms, which may cause doctors to misdiagose it.

Here's a quote:

"They found that women did have blockages in their major arteries; the blockages just didn't look the same as in men. The plaque was there, but it was spread out smoothly and evenly against the arterial wall. In men, plaque lumps up; an angiogram would show bumps and lumps in the blood flow. A women's angiogram looks smooth.

The difference appears to relate to the way men and women store fat."

Interesting stuff -- also interesting that it's taken us (that's the collective us -- I'm a blogger, not a doctor) this long to realize this.

* Following up on my post about the Mumbai bombings: Earlier, I'd noticed that the traditional news media hadn't really been falling over themselves with coverage of the attacks.

Over at blog Sepia Mutiny, they're wondering why the blogosphere has basically ignored the Mumbai attacks (relatively speaking), compared to the coverage of other attacks, such as the transit bombings in London and Madrid, as well as the nightclub bombing in Bali.

The big ole sphere o' blogs is supposed to fill in for the stories that the mainstream media is supposed to miss, but perhaps the attention spans are more closely linked than we'd like to believe.

(Link via Boing Boing)

Thanks -- Joe