A CT scan — a kind of super X-ray — provides a faster, cheaper way to diagnose a heart attack when someone goes to the emergency room with chest pains, a new study suggests.

The Taipei Veteran General Hospital (Taipei VGH) signed an agreement Monday with Sanofi-aventis, Europe's No. 1 pharmaceutical company and the world's No. 3, to jointly set up a clinical research and development center that will explore new drugs for treating heart disease.

People who were exposed in the womb to the swine flu virus that caused the deadly pandemic of 1918 were more likely to develop heart disease later in life, said a U.S. study to be released Thursday.

Women under 50 who have a rare flaw in their immune system are 43 times more at risk of a stroke and five times likelier to have a heart attack than the general population, a study said on Monday.

Smoking bans in public places can significantly reduce the number of heart attacks, two U.S. research teams reported on Monday.

Middle-aged male smokers with high cholesterol and blood pressure die, on average, a decade sooner than peers without any of these heart disease risk factors, according to a study published Friday.

Tsui Ning, a 29-year-old tourist, will be coming back to Taipei from Brisbane in a couple of days after her cerebral thrombosis has been held in check, thanks to some timely help from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Americans need to cut back dramatically on sugar consumption, the American Heart Association said on Monday in a recommendation that is likely to rile food and beverage companies.

Doctors in Germany have successfully implanted the world's smallest artificial heart pump, billed as more effective and unobtrusive than earlier devices, a hospital said Monday.

Heart attack survivors who eat chocolate two or more times per week cut their risk of dying from heart disease about threefold compared to those who never touch the stuff, scientists have reported.