Heart muscle health is protected by two pathways: one mediated by nitric oxide and the other by natriuretic peptide. “The existence of two separate pathways with overlapping but distinct functions is nature’s insurance policy, a fail-safe redundancy to ensure that should one pathway falter, the other one can compensate and maintain heart muscle function,” explainedContinueContinue reading “The second trigger in heart failure”
Tag Archives: cardiovascular system
Telomerase limits damage after heart attack
The enzyme telomerase is known to repair various types of cell damage, and new results indicate that this activity can be exploited to prevent damage to heart tissue after acute injury such as a heart attack or myocardial infarction. Lab Anim. (NY) 44, 46 (2015). view full text (login required)
The heart of an endurance athlete
Physical activity has many positive effects on the cardiovascular system, but intense endurance training can also be detrimental. Athletes, especially those with a long training history, are more likely to develop arrhythmias. Sinus bradycardia (a slow resting heart rate) is the most common training-associated arrhythmia. Although it is often a benign physiological adaptation to maintainContinueContinue reading “The heart of an endurance athlete”
The shape of monitoring to come
Engineers led by John Rogers (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) have created a three-dimensional, electrode-bearing, elastic membrane that can be wrapped directly around a beating heart and used to measure the electrical, mechanical, chemical and physical properties across its entire surface without disrupting cardiac function (Nat. Commun. doi:10.1038/ncomms4329; published online 25 February 2014). Lab Anim.ContinueContinue reading “The shape of monitoring to come”
EETs encourage growth
Epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs) are lipid mediators that facilitate the growth of new blood vessels. Such angiogenic factors are involved in responses to tissue injury and are required for normal organ and tissue regeneration, but a specific role for EETs in regeneration has not been established. To explore this possibility, Dipak Panigrahy (Harvard Medical School, Boston,ContinueContinue reading “EETs encourage growth”
Reducing ribonucleotides, boosting heart function
A study from researchers at the University of Washington (Seattle) has shown that long-term improvements in heart function—faster, stronger heart muscle contraction—can be gained by increasing levels of deoxy-adenosine-5′-triphosphate (dATP) in genetically engineered mice. Lab Anim. (NY) 42, 154 (2013). view full text (login required)
Predicting cardiac event risk in silico
Long QT syndrome type 1 (LQT1) is an inherited disorder in which mutations cause a loss of function of the gene KCNQ1. Electrocardiography of affected individuals shows a longer than normal QT interval, representing a prolonged repolarization of the heart wall during the cardiac cycle. This prolongation results in a greater risk of developing arrhythmiasContinueContinue reading “Predicting cardiac event risk in silico”
Reptiles at heart
To support the high rates of oxygen consumption associated with being warm-blooded, the hearts of birds and mammals must pump rapidly and frequently. These high heart rates are made possible by a network of conductive tissue that spreads across the heart, controlling its contraction. The evolutionary origin of this conductive tissue has long been aContinueContinue reading “Reptiles at heart”
New view on heart attack recurrence
After suffering one heart attack, almost 20% of people will experience a second within a year. The causes of this high recurrence rate are not well understood but could include worsening atherosclerosis (the accumulation of fatty material within arteries that frequently leads to heart attacks) or changes induced by the heart attack itself. Lab Anim.ContinueContinue reading “New view on heart attack recurrence”
Keeping the cornea clear
To preserve its transparency so that we can see clearly, the cornea of the eye normally does not contain blood vessels. The mechanism that prevents vessel growth (angiogenesis) in the cornea to maintain this transparency was previously unknown. But Tsutomu Kume (Feinberg Cardiovascular Research Institute, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL), Ordan Lehmann (University of Alberta, Edmonton,ContinueContinue reading “Keeping the cornea clear”
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