Red flag or red herring

Red Bull®: Red flag or red herring?

Article history: Received 22 December 2016 Accepted 27 December 2016 clinically relevant increase in theQT interval, especially in consideration that these were LQTS patients, and thus expected to have a prolonged QT intervals to begin with. As analogy, the guidelines for LQTS indicate that whenever mexiletine shortens the QTc by at least 40 ms it should be added to beta-blockers for chronic th...

Taurine: red bull or red herring?

Taurine, a sulfur-containing amino acid (Figure), has been termed a functional nutrient that could be used to protect against, among others, diabetes mellitus and atherosclerosis.1 Indeed, an increasing body of literature supports the use of taurine supplements. Because taurine has very diverse functions, notably, intracellular osmoregulation and bile acid formation, and is abundantly present i...

Smoking Gun or Red Herring

In this issue of Circulation Research, Zhang et al1 provide direct and clear evidence that phosphorylation of S2808 in the cardiac ryanodine receptors (RyR2) has no impact on either normal cardiac function, sympathetic stimulation of the heart, or progression of heart failure (HF) after myocardial infarction (MI). They used mice in which the S2808 site was rendered nonphosphorylatable in S2808A...

Salmon Bias or Red Herring?

The purpose of this research is to empirically test the salmon bias hypothesis, which states that the "healthy migrant" effect-referring to a situation in which migrants enjoy lower mortality risks than natives-is caused by selective return-migration of the weak, sick, and elderly. Using a unique longitudinal micro-level database-the Historical Sample of the Netherlands-we tracked the life cour...

Reassurance, Red Flag, or Referral?