Heart

HIV Patients May Be at Risk of Heart Problems When Taking Protease Inhibitor Drugs

A widely-used class of drugs that keep the HIV-virus infection from progressing to AIDS may cause serious and potentially lethal heart rhythm disturbances in some patients. The finding of a Mayo Clinic-led investigation appears in the current edition of The Lancet. In collaboration with colleagues from the HIV Program of Hennepin County Medical Center, Minneapolis; the University of Minn...

UCSD team discovers specialized, rare heart stem cells in newborns

The first evidence of cardiac progenitor cells ?rare, specialized stem cells located in the newborn heart of rats, mice and humans ?has been shown by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. The cells are capable of differentiation into fully mature heart tissue. Called isl1+ cells, these cardiac progenitor cells are stem cells that have been progr...

Implanted Devices Detect High-Risk Heart Failure Patients

Implanted devices intended to optimize the cardiac function of patients with heart failure have provided new insights into which patients might be at higher risk of dying suddenly from their disease, according to researchers at Duke University Medical Center. Besides maintaining optimal electrical stimulation to the heart, these CRT-D (cardiac resynchronization therapy with defibrillation)...

Rush Physicians Using Gene Therapy For Heart Patients With Moderate To Severe Chest Pains Who Do Not Benefit From Other Treatments

Individuals with moderate to severe chest pains (angina) who have not found relief from medication may benefit from a new gene therapy approach being used by cardiologists at Rush University Medical Center to grow new blood vessels in the heart. The phase II clinical research study uses vascular endothelial growth factor-2 (VEGF-2) in the form of a solution containing a DNA plasmid that i...

Special Imaging Study Shows Failing Hearts Are 'Energy Starved'

Using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) for the first time to examine energy production biochemistry in a beating human heart, Johns Hopkins researchers have found substantial energy deficits in failing hearts. The findings, published in the January 18 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirm what many scientists have conjectured for years about heart fail...

Stem Cell Research Shows Potential for Replacing Tissue Damaged in Heart Attacks

A Medical College of Wisconsin research team, led by John W. Lough, Ph.D., professor of cell biology, neurobiology and anatomy has found that embryonic stem cells (ES cells) in animals can be cultivated to form new tissue, which eventually may help doctors learn how to replace tissue damaged as a result of a heart attack. The potential for ES cells to replace damaged or diseased cells in...

Single stem cells from bone heal a broken heart

Myocardial infarction results in irreversible damage to the heart that can cause congestive heart failure. The lasting damage results from the limited ability of the myocardium to regenerate and self-repair. Douglas Losordo and colleagues from Tufts University now document the existence of a previously unrecognized subset of human bone marrow–derived stem cells with therapeutic potency for myocar...

Heart repair gets new muscle

Some organs in the human body deal with injury better than others. A flesh wound or muscle tear might hurt, but, assuming you are otherwise healthy, both will heal. The prognosis for a heart attack, on the other hand, is not so clear-cut. It has long been thought that cardiac cells (cardiomyocytes) lack the capacity for self-renewal and repair, impeding the chances of a full recovery from...

Python a 'hearty' eater

A Burmese python is strong, but is it a model for human exercise? According an article published in the March 3 issue of the journal Nature, the snake's eating habits make it a prime model of cardiovascular fitness. The heart has the amazing ability to adapt to altered physiological requirements, and, according to the authors, this cold-blooded snake may provide insights into how remodeling of th...

Columbia study shows widely used artery clearing device does not help patients during heart attack

Interventional cardiologists from Columbia University Medical Center have shown that a commonly used procedure to remove fatty debris from blocked arteries during a heart attack does not improve patient outcomes. The procedure, called distal microcirculatory protection, is commonly and successfully used during angioplasty in vein grafts and stenting in carotid arteries. The study, publish...

Researchers reveal secret of key protein in brain and heart function

Brown University biologists have solved the structure of a critical piece of synapse-associated protein 97 (SAP97) found in abundance in the heart and head, where it is believed to play a role in everything from cardiac contractions to memory creation. Results are published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry. Dale Mierke, associate professor of medical science at Brown, said that knowi...

Stem cell therapy successfully treats heart attack in animals

Final results of a study conducted at Johns Hopkins show that stem cell therapy can be used effectively to treat heart attacks, or myocardial infarction, in pigs. In just two months, stem cells harvested from another pig's bone marrow and injected into the animal's damaged heart restored heart function and repaired damaged heart muscle by 50 percent to 75 percent. The Hopkins findings, fir...

New defibrillator signals doctor of patient's irregular heartbeat or device malfunction

Loyola first in U.S. to implant new FDA-approved device In a major advance for heart patients, Loyola University Health System is the first hospital in the U.S. to implant into a patient a new FDA-approved defibrillator which automatically signals the doctor via wireless satellite transmission if the patient's heart beats abnormally or if the device malfunctions, e.g., battery failure.</p...

Male Combat Veterans Rank High In Heart Disease Risk

Men who fought in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War are more likely to be heavy drinkers, heavy smokers and obese than men who are non-combat veterans or non-veterans, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association's 45th annual Conference of Cardiovascular Disease, Epidemiology and Prevention. "Combat veterans were four times more likely to be heavy drin...

Survival of heart patients on beta-blockers varies greatly with genetic variation

Survival of heart attack and unstable angina patients placed on beta-blocker therapy corresponds to specific variations in their genes, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City. The study appears in the September 28, 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. "In our i...

Chemical 'band-aid' prevents heart failure in mice with muscular dystrophy

A common chemical used in the manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries can repair damage to cardiac muscle cell membranes and prevent heart failure in mice with the genetic mutation that causes Duchenne muscular dystrophy, according to scientists at the University of Michigan Medical School. The mutation in the dystrophin gene causes the progressive deterioration of skeletal muscles see...

MicroRNA tweaks protein that controls early heart development

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have discovered how a small molecule of RNA called microRNA ?a chemical cousin of DNA ?helps fine tune the production of a key protein involved in the early development of heart muscle. The findings, available in the online edition of the journal Nature, may aid scientists in their understanding of how a progenitor cell, or stem cell, decides...

Ibruprofen and other commonly used painkillers for treating inflammation may increase the risk of heart attack

When it comes to the deadly skin cancer melanoma, studying functional tissue rather than cell lines may better provide insight into the disease's development, according to new research from a Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine. Though multiple genetic alterations are associated with melanoma development, scientists have not been abl...

Newly Discovered Role for Heart Response Enzyme May Yield Better Heart Failure Therapy

Duke University Medical Center researchers have identified a new protein that plays a critical role in enabling the heart to respond to such external stimuli as exercise or stress, as well as in the progressive loss of heart function that is heart failure, the researchers said. Their findings, they said, suggest new approaches to prevent or reverse heart failure, which affects two to three...

Promising therapies for haemophilia & heart disease

Haemophilia is a hereditary blood disease, primarily affecting males, where the blood fails to clot causing potentially life-threatening 'bleeds'. About one in 6000 Australian males is born with haemophilia in severe, moderate or mild form. People with haemophilia rely on intravenous infusion of recombinant Factor VIII clotting protein. Professor Denisa Wagner and her Harvard colleagues ha...

Bone marrow stem cells may heal hearts even years after heart attacks

Left ventricular function and exercise capacity increased, while the area of heart muscle damage shrank, in 18 patients given infusions of their own bone marrow stem cells up to eight years after a heart attack, according to a new study in the Nov. 1, 2005, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. "This new therapy is able to treat until now irreversible heart complaints...

Gene therapy reverses genetic mutation responsible for heart failure in muscular dystrophy

University of Pittsburgh investigators have for the first time used gene therapy to successfully treat heart failure and other degenerative muscle problems in an animal model that is genetically susceptible to a human muscular dystrophy. Reporting in the Oct. 25 edition of the journal Circulation, the authors say that this is the first successful attempt to deliver a therapeutic gene throughout t...

Researchers Find Drug May Give Some Cardiac Protection 24 Hours After Heart Attack

A drug has been shown to provide some protection to the heart from injury even if given as much as 24 hours after a heart attack, Jefferson Medical College researchers report. Walter Koch, Ph.D., director of the Center for Translational Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and his co-workers knew that the drug D...

Researchers show how air pollution can cause heart disease

New York University School of Medicine researchers provide some of the most compelling evidence yet that long-term exposure to air pollution--even at levels within federal standards--causes heart disease. Previous studies have linked air pollution to cardiovascular disease but until now it was poorly understood how pollution damaged the body's blood vessels. In a well-designed mouse study,...

Bare metal stents deliver gene therapy to heart vessels with less inflammation in animal studies

Improved materials may allow stents, tiny metal scaffolds inserted into blood vessels, to better deliver beneficial genes to patients with heart disease, by reducing the risk of inflammation that often negates initial benefits. The new technique, using a compound that binds in an extremely thin layer to bare metal surfaces, may have potential uses in other areas of medicine that make use of metal...

Feds give researchers ok for safety test of adult stem cells in patients with heart disease

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and University Hospitals of Cleveland announced that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved plans to begin a study to evaluate the safety of using adult stem cells from bone marrow to treat chronic ischemia, a serious form of heart disease. The FDA has approved a Phase I study designed to test the safety of the...

Stem cell mobilization therapy appears to be ineffective in repairing damage caused by heart attack

Therapy that involved bone marrow stem cells did not improve cardiac function in patients following a heart attack, according to a study in the March 1 issue of JAMA. There has been increasing evidence that stem cells contribute to regeneration of cardiac tissue and the development of new blood vessels following a heart attack, thus opening up new prospects for stem-cell based therapies. G...

Whole-genome study at Johns Hopkins reveals a new gene associated with abnormal heart rhythm

Using a new genomic strategy that has the power to survey the entire human genome and identify genes with common variants that contribute to complex diseases, researchers at Johns Hopkins, together with scientists from Munich, Germany, and the Framingham Heart Study, U.S.A., have identified a gene that may predispose some people to abnormal heart rhythms that lead to sudden cardiac death, a condi...

New drug could reduce tissue damage after heart attack

A study led by UCL (University College London) scientists has designed a new drug that inhibits the adverse effects of C reactive protein (CRP), a protein that contributes to tissue damage in heart attacks and strokes. The findings, published in the journal Nature, suggest that targeting CRP may produce both immediate and long-term clinical benefits following a heart attack. CRP is normal...

Researchers create pigs that produce heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids

In diverse ecosystems, packed with wildly different species, evolution whizzes along. As different species accumulate mutations, some adapt particularly well to their environment and prosper. It happens in marine sediments, mountain forests ?and, as a new study illustrates, in precancerous tumors, too. In a study published online today in Nature Genetics, Carlo Maley, Ph.D., a researcher a...

Fruit fly's beating heart helps identify human heart disease genes

In a discovery that could greatly accelerate the search for genetic causes of heart disease, a multi-disciplinary Duke University research team has found that the common fruit fly can serve as a powerful new model for testing human genes implicated in heart disease. The finding is important, the Duke team said, because the entire genome of the fruit fly is well understood and catalogued, e...

Antioxidant selenium offers no heart-disease protection

Selenium does not protect against cardiovascular disease, despite its documented antioxidant and chemopreventive properties, analysis of a randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial covering 13 years has shown. The selenium-CVD association was a secondary endpoint in the Nutritional Prevention of Cancer Trial, which was designed primarily to determine if selenium supplementation could prevent t...

For one Stanford doctor, the beat goes on during open-heart surgery

In a Stanford Hospital surgery room on a recent afternoon, heart surgeon Kai Ihnken demonstrated how he repositions the beating heart while it's still inside the chest of a 78-year-old man undergoing triple bypass surgery. The surgeon reached into the chest, lifted the beating heart out, then craned his neck to the side, just so, searching for the right spot on the back of the heart to attach the...

Heart-healthy compound in chocolate identified

In a multifaceted study involving the Kuna Indians of Panama, an international team of scientists has pinpointed a chemical compound that is, in part, responsible, for the heart-healthy benefits of certain cocoas and some chocolate products. The researchers, who are from the University of California, Davis; the Heinrich-Heine University of Duesseldorf, Germany; and Harvard Medical School,...

Stem cell study for patients with heart attack damage seeks to regenerate heart muscle

Rush cardiologists are hoping that transplanted stem cells can regenerate damaged heart muscle in those who experience a first heart attack. The study involves an intravenous infusion of adult mesenchymal stem cells from healthy donor bone marrow that might possibly reverse damage to heart tissue. A unique benefit of the stem cell product is that it is given to patients through a standard...

Oh, rats! Designer animals reveal possible heart disease genes

Every year, heart disease claims an estimated 7 million lives, according to the World Health Organization. Scientists have struggled to pinpoint the precise genes behind this complex disease. Now, however, they have a new research ally: the designer rat. , researchers at The Institute for...

Rhinos clinging to survival in the heart of Borneo, despite poaching

World Wildlife Fund today released the results of a field survey from the island of Borneo which found that poaching has significantly reduced Borneo's population of Sumatran rhinos, but a small group continues to survive in the "Heart of Borneo," a region covered with vast tracts of rain forest. The survey found evidence of at least 13 rhinos in the interior of the Malaysian state of Sab...

Key heart and Alzheimer's disease protein imaged for first time in native state

Researchers for the first time have created a three-dimensional image of apolipoprotein E, a protein long associated with cardiovascular disease and more recently with Alzheimer's disease, as it appears when it is bound to fat-like substances known as lipids. Using the technique known as x-ray crystallography, scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease (GICD) have cre...

Researchers now able to look deep into heart to view triggers of a heart's beat

Scientists have long known that the social insects in the order Hymenoptera--which includes ants, bees, and wasps--have an unusual mechanism for sex determination: Unfertilized eggs develop into males, while fertilized eggs become females. But the development of an unfertilized egg into an adult (called parthenogenesis) remains a mysterious process. One mystery has been the origin of the...

Potential heart benefit found in stem cells

Stem cell transplantation is among one of the most exciting and hotly debated areas of medical research today. While the promise of personalized medicine and effective treatments for debilitating diseases drive progress in this area, moral and ethical dilemmas about embryonic cells continues to cloud the field. In research presented today at the American College of Cardiology's 55th Annual Scie...