Studies examine newborn vitamin K shots, heart drugs

A number of parents are refusing vitamin K shots for their newborns, and new research suggests their babies may be paying the price. Plus, two promising heart drugs dramatically lowered cholesterol-related and inflammatory risk factors, but failed to reduce heart attacks and strokes. So here to give us the details on these studies, we've got Emory Dr. Neal Winower with us once again. Good to see you, Dr. Winower. Good to see you too. Hi, good morning. All right, so before we get into the study, why is vitamin K recommended? Why is it important It's an essential vitamin that helps with blood clotting, so it prevents bleeding. And this study was very interesting, but before we even get into it, vitamin K doesn't cross the placenta. And also it's not, well it doesn't cross the placenta in big quantities and also it's not available in breast milk and newborns don't produce it. So newborns are deficient in vitamin K and for the last 60 years, we've been giving a vitamin K injection around the time of birth, which has helped to prevent bleeding. And in this study, we looked at it, 3%. Yeah, so what are the results, I guess we should say, of this study, and what are the consequences if a newborn doesn't get it? Yeah, well, this was an observational trial, so it can't prove cause and effect, but it But during that same time, 50% more bleeding in children from 2017 to 2025. And then there was another study looking at over 10 million kids, which showed that the increased risk of bleeding quadrupled. So essentially what I could tell parents for every 114 kids in this study. For every 114 who got a vitamin K injection, you prevented one episode of significant bleeding. So when you talk about millions of people One out of every 100 or so is a real big number that you can prevent bleeding by giving a vitamin K shot. So why has it become controversial? I mean, if this jumped from 3% not getting it up to what you say, 7% not getting it, why are our parents hesitant now? I think look no further than the pandemic. When you talk about 2017 to 2025 and pandemic in 2019, and I think you have Vaccine hesitancy, you have misinformation on social media, you have mistrust of science. People might think an injection is a vaccine and might think, okay, I don't want any injections for... My newborn. So I think that is probably what we're dealing with. It's complicated. It's not one specific thing. Okay. All right. We're going to switch gears. We're going to turn to heart disease. Two promising medications recently failed to reduce heart attacks and other cardiovascular events, despite successfully lowering important risk factors. So what were the drugs targeting and what's going on here? Yeah, this is a really big disappointment. We were looking forward to the results of this. One looked at lipoprotein little a, which is This is a fat-containing, particle that has been you so with increased risk o f heart attack and strokes, so people who have higher joining levels by 80%. So if you think, wow, it reduced it by 80%, but it did not reduce over a five-year us. period the risk of heart attack or stroke in any subgroup. And then the other study, which looked at inflammation, also the inflammatory markers from that drug went way down. They looked at C-reactive protein and other inflammatory markers, and those inflammatory Inflammatory markers improve significantly as well, but the risk of heart attack, the The risk of stroke and the risk of heart attack or stroke-related death did not change at all in either of those studies. So it was really disappointing. And so the numbers look better, but the patients did exactly the same. Yeah. So how do we explain those disappointing results? And what would you say that that means for the future of treating heart disease? Yeah, this is the scientific method in action. I mean, people say it's a failure, But it's a success of science in the sense that we don't just... Think that, oh, well, if this is going to reduce a secondary outcome, a number. Whether it's going to have a great effect. And so we study it. We basically design a trial looking at people who get the drug and who don't get the drug. And then we analyze the outcome. So I think that this is what this study teaches us. That the scientific method is still very, very important. And we don't just look at secondary outcomes or numbers. And so what do we do? We go back to what we know works. Eating a healthy diet. Pretty much a plant-based diet. Lowering your bad cholesterol. not smoking, if you're smoking, if you're a diabetic, controlling your blood sugar, exercise, all those things we know reduce heart disease. So we continue to do that while we have other studies looking at different drugs and different agents, and we see whether we move forward. But for now, it's just going to be the tried and true things that we always know to do. But we don't have a magic pill yet. I gotcha. All right, covering two topics for us today I figured, you know, both were worth... discussing, you know, so this is great. Dr. Winterwood, thank you so much for weighing in on this. It's my pleasure. It's 9:41. Let's get to it.