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It has always been unclear what intra-cellular mechanism initiates cardiac  cell fate from undifferentiated cells," says Alexandre Colas, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Development, Aging and Regeneration Program at SBP and corresponding author on the paper. "These genes are the earliest determinants of cardiac cell fate. This enables us to generate unlimited amounts of bona fide cardiac progenitors for regenerative purposes, disease modeling and drug discovery." The international team, which included researchers from the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Italy, University Pierre and Marie Curie in France and the University of Coimbra in Portugal, combined CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, high-throughput microRNA screening and other techniques to identify the role Id genes play in heart development. In particular, CRISPR played a crucial role, allowing them to knock out all four Id genes. Previous studies had knocked out some of these ge...

OSAS correlates with various disorders, such as heart attack and ischemic stroke, causing researchers to wonder what, if anything, are the commonalities between these very different disorders. They hope that through better understanding of what occurs over the course of apnea episodes they can potentially translate this knowledge into glaucoma treatment. To continue to investigate this connection, researchers need to take numerous factors into account and use innovative, new technology to determine the real connection. Creating Innovative Technology Because increased IOP is most often associated with glaucoma, it is the first thing that researchers investigate when they see correlations with other disorders, such as OSAS. In the past, night-time data collection to search for the connection between OSAS and glaucoma was hampered, since it's challenging and uncomfortable to collect data related to shifts in IOP while the patient is sleeping, and constant waking affects the ac...

The first new national guidelines since 2004 on identifying and treating high blood pressure in children and adolescents (aged 3-18 years old) have been published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which convened a panel of experts to produce the new recommendations. The AAP report,  Clinical Practice Guideline for Screening and Management of High Blood Pressure in Children and Adolescents , offers a series of evidence-based recommendations for pediatricians derived from a comprehensive review of nearly 15,000 medical studies published since 2004. The first-line treatment remains lifestyle changes, as there is a high correlation between hypertension and obesity. When untreated, long-standing hypertension can damage the heart, kidneys and brain. Among the new recommendations is a call to only conduct routine blood pressure measurements at annual preventive care ("wellness") visits, as opposed to the 2004 guidelines that urged blood pressure testing anytime a ...

The stimulant methamphetamine, also popularly known as 'speed,' 'ice' and 'meth,' is linked to a heightened risk of stroke among young people, reveals a review of the available evidence, published online in the  Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry . A stroke caused by a bleed into the brain (haemorrhagic) rather than a clot (ischaemic) is the most common type associated with taking this drug, with men twice as likely to succumb as women, the findings show. Given the often disabling or fatal consequences of a stroke, and the increasing use of methamphetamine among young people, particularly in countries around the Pacific rim (North America, East and Southeast Asia, and Oceania), the findings are a cause for concern, warn the researchers. They base their findings on a comprehensive trawl of research looking at a potential link between methamphetamine use and associated stroke risk in young people (under the age of 45), and published up to ...

The brain may have a distinctive activity pattern during stressful events that predicts bodily reactions, such as rises in blood pressure that increase risk for cardiovascular disease, according to new proof-of-concept research in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the Open Access  Journal of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association . The new research, the largest brain-imaging study of cardiovascular stress physiology to date, introduced a brain-based explanation of why stress might influence a person's heart health. "Psychological stress can influence physical health and risk for heart disease, and there may be biological and brain-based explanations for this influence," said Peter Gianaros, Ph.D., the study's senior author and psychology professor at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. To help understand the brain-body link between stress and health, researchers conducted mental stress tests and monitored blood pre...

The research team -- led by the University of Leeds -- has found that a protein called Piezo1 in the lining of blood vessels is able to detect a change in blood flow during exercise. They have described the protein as an 'exercise sensor'. During physical activity -- as the heart pumps more blood around the body -- the Piezo1 protein in the endothelium or lining of the arteries taking blood from the heart to the stomach and intestines senses the increased pressure on the wall of the blood vessels. In response, it slightly alters the electrical balance in the endothelium and this results in the blood vessels constricting. In a clever act of plumbing, that narrowing of the blood vessels reduces blood flow to the stomach and intestines, allowing more blood to reach the brain and muscles actively engaged in exercise. The scientists say this is ground-breaking research because it identifies for the first time a key biomolecular mechanism by which exercise is sensed. ...

The "Body-on-a-chip" device is a novel in vitro human model without the use of people or animals for drug discovery. This chip allows recapitulating the side effect of anti-cancer drug on human heart cells before expensive clinical trials. Credit: Kyoto University iCeMS Researchers at Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) in Japan have designed a small 'body-on-a-chip' device that can test the side effects of drugs s on human cells. The device solves some issues with current, similar microfluidic devices and offers promise for the next generation of pre-clinical drug tests. The Integrated Heart/Cancer on a Chip (iHCC) was used to test the toxicity of the anti-cancer drug doxorubicin on heart cells. The researchers, led by iCeMS's Ken-ichiro Kamei, found that, while the drug itself was not toxic to heart cells, a metabolite of the drug resulting from its interaction with cancer cells was. The device is sm...

A new study has found that a condition that threatens the lives of some pregnant women and the fetus may continue to put the mother at risk later in life. Mayo Clinic researchers found that women with a history of pre-eclampsia are more likely to face atherosclerosis -- hardening and narrowing of the arteries -- decades after their pregnancy. The findings are published in the September issue of  Mayo Clinic Proceedings . Pre-eclampsia -- a condition in pregnant women commonly characterized by high blood pressure -- typically shows itself 20 weeks into the pregnancy, and can occur suddenly or develop slowly. The complication poses a concern to the mother and fetus, and affects between 2 and 7 percent of pregnancies. "We've found that pre-eclampsia continues to follow mothers long after the birth of their child," says Vesna Garovic, M.D., Ph.D., Mayo Clinic Division of Nephrology and Hypertension. "The good news is that we can use these findings to apply earli...

Scientists from UCLA and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute successfully used a gene that suppresses cholesterol levels as part of a treatment to reduce plaque in mice with a disorder called familial hypercholesterolemia. In a preclinical study, researchers found that the gene, LeXis, lowered cholesterol and blockages in the arteries, and the treatment appeared to reduce the build-up of fat in liver cells. Familial hypercholesterolemia is an inherited condition characterized by extremely high levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (commonly referred to as "bad cholesterol") and an increased risk of early heart disease. The LeXis gene belongs to a unique group of genes that until recently were considered "junk DNA" because scientists believed they served little purpose. However, evidence from the human genome project led to the discovery that genes like LeXis are actually active. The study of these genes, now referred to as long noncoding ribonucleic a...

With the use of implanted cardiac monitors researchers found a substantial incidence (nearly 30 percent) of previously undiagnosed atrial fibrillation (AF) after 18 months in patients at high risk of both AF and stroke, according to a study published by  JAMA Cardiology . The study is being released to coincide with its presentation at the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2017. Atrial fibrillation affects millions of people worldwide and increases with older age, hypertension , diabetes, and heart failure, conditions that are associated with increased stroke risk. Atrial fibrillation episodes may be symptomatic, asymptomatic (i.e., silent AF), or both. Heart failure or stroke can be the first clinical manifestation of AF. Recognition of previously undiagnosed AF and initiation of appropriate therapies is essential for stroke prevention. Minimally invasive prolonged electrocardiographic monitoring with small, insertable cardiac monitors (ICMs) placed under the skin cou...