(Press-News.org)
University of Virginia School of Medicine scientists have found important answers about strokes, heart attacks and cardiovascular diseases by probing the biological glue our bodies create to protect us from those deadly dangers.
The researchers, led by Mete Civelek, PhD, wanted to better understand factors that influence our risk for cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis, the hardening of the arteries. Atherosclerosis is characterized by the buildup of fatty plaques in our blood vessels. When these plaques form, our bodies build fibrous caps over them to keep them from breaking loose and causing heart attacks and strokes.
Civelek and his team thought that the scaffolding our bodies build over these plaques might contain important clues that could improve our understanding of cardiovascular diseases, the leading cause of death around the world. And by taking a clever approach, the scientists were able to obtain important new insights that could advance the development of lifesaving treatments.
“We combined two decades of human genetics findings and a unique resource of smooth muscle cells, an important component of arteries where the plaques develop,” said Civelek, of UVA’s Center for Public Health Genomics and the Department of Biomedical Engineering. “We discovered that our genetic makeup impacts the ways smooth muscle cells secrete proteins that provide strength to plaques and prevent them from rupturing and causing heart attacks and strokes.”
Vital Cellular Glue
To construct the protective scaffolding over the potentially deadly plaques, smooth muscle cells that line our blood vessels secrete what is known as “extracellular matrix” – a fibrous, glue-like material rich in proteins. Civelek and his team measured these proteins, and related proteins, in smooth muscle cells collected from 123 heart transplant donors. The scientists were then able to work backward, essentially, to identify genes that made those proteins.
Doing this let the scientists identify 20 locations on our chromosomes that house genes that influence the production of the critical proteins. It also let them pinpoint a naturally occurring gene variation that puts certain people at higher risk for hardening of the arteries, as well as identify types of proteins that contribute to our cardiovascular risk. Doctors may be able to leverage the new insights to identify patients at greatest risk of having the plaques break free and cause heart attacks or strokes, the UVA researchers say.
The findings also shed important light on why the efforts of the smooth muscle cells sometimes are beneficial and sometimes are harmful. That information will be a great asset to researchers seeking to develop new treatments for atherosclerosis and cardiovascular diseases, Civelek says.
“We identified one protein, LTBP1, that we think plays an important role in plaque stability,” he said. “We will continue to study if this protein can be a beneficial therapeutic target and hope to translate our findings to patient care soon.”
Findings Published
The researchers have published their findings in the scientific journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. The research team consisted of Rédouane Aherrahrou, Ferheen Baig, Konstantinos Theofilatos, Dillon Lue, Alicia Beele, Tiit Örd, Minna U. Kaikkonen, Zouhair Aherrahrou, Qi Cheng, Saikat Ghosh, Santosh Karnewar, Vaishnavi Karnewar, Aloke Finn, Gary K. Owens, Michael Joner, Manuel Mayr and Civelek. The researchers have no financial interest in the work.
The research was supported the American Heart Association, postdoctoral fellowship 18POST33990046; the University of Eastern Finland; the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research; the CORONA Foundation, grant S0199/10097/2023; Transformational Project Award 19TPA34910021; the National Institutes of Health, grant R21HL135230 and. R01 HL155165; the Academy of Finland, grants 333021 and 335973; the European Research Council Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, grant 802825; the Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research; the Sigrid Jusélius Foundation; and Foundation Leducq, International Network of Excellence Awards 12CVD02, 18CVD02 and 22CVD04 and its Junior Investigator Award.
UVA’s Department of Biomedical Engineering is a joint program of the School of Medicine and the School of Engineering.
To keep up with the latest medical research news from UVA, subscribe to the Making of Medicine blog at http://makingofmedicine.virginia.edu
END
[Toronto, March 11, 2024] — Little is known about the willingness of sexual minority adults—people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or other nonheterosexual orientation identities—to use digital health tools. A new study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research by Dr Wilson Vincent of Temple University, has shed light on this question in the context of public health screening and tracking. The research challenges assumptions about the uptake of such technologies, particularly amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr Vincent notes that past studies have seldom looked into how willing ...
UNIST has once again been internationally recognized for maintaining the highest standard of quality in its business education programs.
On February 26, UNIST proudly announced that the School of Business Administration, the Graduate School of Technology and Innovation Management, and the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Management have successfully renewed their accreditation in business education from the prestigious Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).
This renewal of accreditation by AACSB underscores the exceptional quality of business programs at UNIST, with the university initially earning AACSB accreditation in 2018. UNIST holds the distinction ...
A groundbreaking technology that enables the real-time display of colors and shapes through changes in nanostructures has been developed. This innovative technology, pioneered by Professor Kang Hee Ku and her team in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST, has the potential to revolutionize various fields, such as smart polymer particles.
Utilizing block copolymers, the research team has achieved the self-assembly of photonic crystal structures on a large scale, mimicking natural phenomena observed ...
Americans' basic confidence in science and scientific expertise was unshaken by the Trump administration's attacks on scientific expertise, and has remained high during the last six decades, according to an analysis led by the University of Michigan.
Trump's attacks on scientific experts—exemplified by criticism of Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—increased the level of partisan polarization in the United States and made the question of scientific expertise more salient ...
Natural products have unique chemical structures and biological activities and can play a pivotal role in advancing pharmaceutical science. In a pioneering study, researchers from Shinshu University discovered Inaoside A, an antioxidant derived from Laetiporus cremeiporus mushrooms. This breakthrough sheds light on the potential of mushrooms as a source of therapeutic bioactive compounds.
The search for novel bioactive compounds from natural sources has gained considerable momentum in recent years due to the need for new therapeutic ...
Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have shown that three months of social worker follow-up support to people hospitalized with HIV in Tanzania had health benefits at low cost. The protocol shortened the time it took participants to attend an HIV clinic and to start on antiretroviral therapy after discharge.
However, the study published in JAMA on Mar. 6 found that the care benefits didn’t translate to a decrease in mortality after one year. They compared a group that received extended case management intervention with a control group receiving ...
University of Michigan researchers have identified the protein that enables mammals to sense cold, filling a long-standing knowledge gap in the field of sensory biology.
The findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, could help unravel how we sense and suffer from cold temperature in the winter, and why some patients experience cold differently under particular disease conditions.
"The field started uncovering these temperature sensors over 20 years ago, with the discovery of a heat-sensing protein called TRPV1," said neuroscientist Shawn ...
Emergency planners in Shanghai and New York City face increasing pressure to protect elderly citizens from the devastating impact of coastal flooding caused by storms and cyclones, a new study reveals.
Both cities are highly exposed to storm-induced flooding and analysis shows that - with two distinct systems of emergency operation – there are significant differences between them in evacuating elderly people to safety.
After studying emergency operations in the cities, experts devised a blueprint for efficient evacuation that could be used in similar flood-threatened cities around the globe such as Mumbai, Bangkok, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, Miami, ...
Peer-reviewed – survey - people
More than a third of people who self-identify as having a smell disorder have had at least one gas safety scare in the last five years, according to new research.
The study, led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) in collaboration with the charity Fifth Sense, asked people who cannot smell well what safety concerns they had and if they had experienced any hazardous events.
A total of 432 people responded to the online survey, which was conducted from February 25 to September 28, 2022, and distributed via the charity.
It ...
At school, he was inspired by Schrödinger´s book ‘What is Life?’. Now, several decades later, Leonid Sazanov is awarded the Erwin Schrödinger Prize by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). The scientist heads a research group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and was honored “for his outstanding achievements in the field of structural biology of membrane protein complexes.” Sazanov is the sixth ISTA scientist to receive the prestigious Schrödinger Award.
“I am especially ...
