Orshe

Heart patients may be nervous or anxious about having sex, but most of them can do so safely — and they shouldn’t be afraid to bring up the topic with their doctor.

So says the American Heart Association in its first scientific statement on sexual activity and cardiovascular disease, published online by Circulation.

The Health Blog’s chief safety worry about running has always been evading the cellphone-wielding drivers making right turns with no regard to who might be in the crosswalk.

But anecdotal reports of deaths during marathons and half-marathons over the past few years have raised public concern over whether running — or at least racing — long distances is hazardous for the heart.

The FDA said it approved an external pump with implantable tubes to keep kids’ hearts going while they await a transplant.

The official name for the device is the Excor Pediatric System. But it’s commonly known by the name of its manufacturer, a German company called Berlin Heart.

Snips and snails and puppy dog tails — and cholesterol?

Well, no one’s saying little boys (or girls) are actually made of the stuff, but plenty of them have too much of it. So a panel appointed by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute is recommending that all children between the ages of 9 and 11 be screened for high cholesterol.

Screening Kids: Guidelines expected to be presented Sunday by members of National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute panel will call for screening more kids for high cholesterol, the Associated Press reports. Panel members wouldn’t reveal details of the new recommendations ahead of the presentation — which will be at a meeting of the American Heart Association — but said they would include “more aggressive recommendations for cholesterol screening and treatment in children,” the AP says.

Can even moderate drinking increase the risk of breast cancer?

Previous research suggests so, reports today’s Health Journal column.

A study just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association backs up that point. It tracked almost 106,000 women enrolled in the Nurse’s Health Study from 1980 and 2008, asking them about their current and past drinking habits.

Orphan-Drug Report: A new report by the National Organization for Rare Disorders finds the FDA’s less stringent standards for approving drugs targeted at rare disorders have made it easier for those drugs to reach patients in need, the WSJ reports. The group receives funding from pharmaceutical companies. The report may allay criticism that the FDA hasn’t done enough to help bring so-called orphan drugs to market, the paper says.