(HealthDay News) -- Being vaccinated against pneumonia halves the risk of having a heart attack two years later, a new Canadian study finds.

The study compared 999 people admitted to Canadian hospitals for heart attacks, with 3,996 admitted for other reasons. It found no difference between those who did or did not have the pneumococcal vaccine in the previous year, but a 50 percent lower rate for those getting the vaccine two years earlier.

(HealthDay News) -- An animal study raises a warning sign that a new class of drugs that shows promise against a variety of ailments ranging from cancer to Alzheimer's disease might cause congenital heart defects, researchers report.

"We have no idea if there will be any risk, but the study suggests we should be aware of the possibility," said Dr. Thomas Force, a professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and lead author of an online report in the October issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

(HealthDay News) -- A new statement from the American Heart Association (AHA) emphasizes the need to screen heart patients for depression.

Depressed people with heart disease have at least twice the risk of second cardiac events in the one to two years following a heart attack. And more severe depression is associated with more severe second events.

The new statement, published in the current issue of Circulation, includes the following recommendations, which are endorsed by the American Psychiatric Association:

* Early and repeated screening for depression in heart patients.

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 1 (HealthDay News) -- The largest observational study of hormone replacement therapy since the landmark Women's Health Initiative finds that how and when women take hormone replacement therapy affects their heart attack risk.

Younger women had a higher risk of heart attacks, especially younger women who took hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for a long time, Danish researchers found. Certain formulations also lead to different results.

FRIDAY, Sept. 26 (HealthDay News) -- A physical exam and patient history may still be one of the most accurate and cost-effective ways of assessing patients with congestive heart failure, even though doctors have come to rely on high-tech diagnostic methods such as imaging and measuring biomarkers, a new study says.

The largest alternative medicine study the government has ever launched has stopped enrolling people while officials investigate whether participants were fully informed of the risks and are being adequately protected, The Associated Press has learned.

More than 1,500 heart attack survivors are involved in the research, which tests a controversial treatment called chelation. It is mainly used to treat lead poisoning.

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Some researchers at Johns Hopkins think those popular caffeinated drinks deserve a warning label.

According to a New York Times article, "the caffeine content of energy drinks varies from 50 milligrams to more than 500 milligrams per serving. A regular 12-ounce cola drink has about 35 milligrams of caffeine, and a 6-ounce cup of brewed coffee has 80 to 150 milligrams of caffeine.

Some energy drinks contain the caffeine equivalent of 14 cans of Coca-Cola, said Roland Griffiths, a professor of behavioral biology and one of the study authors."

THURSDAY, Sept. 25 (HealthDay News) -- The risk of stroke has become so low for patients with asymptomatic carotid stenosis (ACS), 95 percent of them would be better off receiving medical therapy rather than surgery or stenting, according to a Canadian-led study.

ACS is narrowing of the carotid (neck) artery that has not yet caused a stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA). In the United States, one-half to two-thirds of patients who undergo revascularization surgery have no symptoms, according to background information in a University of Western Ontario new release about the study.

(HealthDay News) -- In patients with coronary artery disease, angioplasty isn't a cost-effective treatment, according to a U.S. study that assessed the costs of hospitalization and medication among 2,287 patients treated between 1999 and 2004.

The researchers analyzed data from the COURAGE trial and concluded that angioplasty may add $10,000 to treatment costs "without significant gain in life years or quality-adjusted life years."

(HealthDay News) -- In the wake of several high-profile medication errors, some of them fatal, involving widely used blood thinners, the Joint Commission has released an alert recommending strategies to reduce these errors.

The new alert focuses specifically on low-molecular weight heparin, warfarin and low-molecular weight enoxaparin.