ESC Congress 2003
Sudden cardiac death from ventricular tachyarrhythmias is the leading cause of death in Europe and the US. It effects hundreds of thousands people each year. Many of them have known heart disease, mainly coronary artery disease. The implantable defibrillator (ICD) effectively treats such arrhythmias and prevents sudden cardiac death. Identification of patients at risk who may gain profit from prophylactic ICD implantation remains a difficult task for the cardiologist
Dendritic cells monitor foreign substances in the body and communicate whether they present a danger to the rest of the immune system. Emory immunologists have developed a sensitive method to detect and follow dendritic cells by marking them with a change in their DNA, and have discovered that they are more numerous and longer lived than other scientists had previously observed. Their research uses a gene gun, which shoots DNA into the skin using microscopic gold pellets, and could lead to a faster a
New agricultural crops stand a better chance of helping to fill the world’s bread baskets, says a University of Maine economist, if plant breeders take farmers’ needs into account early in the crop development process. A new research report by Timothy J. Dalton, assistant professor in the Dept. of Resource Economics and Policy, is one of the first to demonstrate farmers’ preferences using a quantitative approach.
Dalton’s research could help agricultural research organiz
Rensselaer Researchers Pioneer Interconnect Technology that May Take Chips Into 3-D
Researchers led by Ronald J. Gutmann in the Focus Center-New York at Rensselaer (FC-NY-RPI) are pioneering new interconnect technologies that promise to deliver smaller, faster, inexpensive, microelectronics and circuits that function in three dimensions.
Researchers at Rensselaer’s Focus Center-NY for Interconnections for Gigascale Integration believe that a strategy in which several chip wa
Discovery of ‘hot pepper’ receptor in heart may explain chest pain, lead to new treatments
The secret to heart attack chest pain may be on the tip of your tongue.
Although they may seem unlikely bedfellows, Penn State College of Medicine researchers found evidence to suggest that the same type of nerve receptors that register the burning sensation from hot peppers in the mouth may cause the sensation of chest pain from a heart attack.
“Our study is the first to demonstrat
Bisphosphonate drugs reduce the risk of bone complications when used in patients whose cancer has spread to the bone, according to a new study in the BMJ.
Researchers reviewed over 30 studies examining the effect of bisphosphonates – a group of drugs commonly used to treat osteoporosis – on complications of secondary bone cancer. Cancers that commonly spread to the bone include breast cancer, prostate cancer and multiple myeloma.
They found that patients given bisphosphonate drugs w
Probably, animals and human beings possess a biochemical vehicle for measuring life span. The key role in this vehicle is played by a short DNA – chronomere. The chronomeric ageing theory, based on tremendous experimental material, has been developed with support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.
Early in the 70s of the 20th century, Russian researcher Alexy Olovnikov forecast existence of the chromosomes’’ end sequences – telomer, which shorten after each cell division
ESC Congress 2003: Hot Line I – Medical Treatment & Heart Failure
We have shown that a simple blood test measuring B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP), a marker of heart failure, greatly helps doctors to manage patients presenting with shortness of breath to the emergency department. Used in conjunction with other clinical information, rapid measurement of BNP reduced hospitalisations, reduced need for intensive care, reduced total treatment time and significantly reduced total treatmen
Are they really capable of replacing injured cells and reducing infarct size?
The new concept of cell transplantation has been addressed by two recent human investigations. Bone marrow cells of the patient are injected into the coronary circulation about one week after myocardial infarct to replace the injured cells and reduce the infarct size. This intervention seemed to be successful to reduce the contractile malefunction after myocardial infarction. The background of this observati
Surgical repair of such aneurysms and interposition of vascular protheses were until recently the only treatment option for complicated cases (diameter „d 5.5 cm; impending rupture; malperfusion syndrome; recurrent pain). Although great strides have been achieved by improving surgical techniques, postoperative complications (such as persistent paralysis of both legs, stroke, acute renal failure or pulmonary dysfunction) and 30-day mortality remain high. Especially elderly patients with accompanying
ESC Congress 2003
Aortic stenosis (AS) is the narrowing or obstruction of the heart´s aortic valve, which prevents it from opening properly and blocks the flow of blood from the left ventricle to the aorta. AS is common in the ageing population and has become the most frequent native valve disease in Europe. AS when severe, may cause left heart failure, fainting or angina, but the natural progression of less severe degrees is highly variable.
The risk factors for the developm
The core of the earth doesn’t look the way it was expected to. Scientists at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden , KTH, can now show that iron, under extremely high pressure, such as that found in the inner earth, takes on unexpected properties, and this can be of importance in understanding the movements of the earth, such as, earthquakes. The results are being presented in the new issue of the British scientific journal Nature.
The core of the earth consists almost excl
Scientific breakthrough in the transmutation of isotopes
Collaboration between the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) DG, the University of Jena (Germany), the University of Strathclyde (UK), Imperial College (UK), and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK) has led to the transmutation of long-lived radioactive iodine-129 into short-lived iodine-128 using very high intensity laser radiation. Until recently, transmutation could only be achieved in nuclear reactors or p
Imagine shopping online for the perfect back-to-school outfit. You can see the colour and size and perhaps the texture of the fabric, but can you tell how it will look from different perspectives under fluorescent classroom lighting? “The material might be very beautiful but a potential customer wouldn’t know that because the image gives a grossly incomplete sense of texture,” says Alex Vasilescu, a doctoral candidate at U of T’s Department of Computer Science. The software she has
Effective and safe complementary nutrition therapy
The results of a new double-blind randomized placebo controlled human trial of people with type 2 diabetes revealed a potential mechanism that may explain the ability of chromium picolinate to improve insulin resistance in human skeletal muscle – the primary site for glucose metabolism. These data suggest that when chromium picolinate is added to the diet, insulin sensitivity improves for people with diabetes, a chronic disease that a
Bioengineers at Dartmouth have genetically engineered yeast to produce humanized therapeutic proteins to address the manufacturing crunch currently confronting the biopharmaceutical industry. Reported in this week’s issue of Science, the researchers have re-engineered the yeast P. pastoris to secrete a complex human glycoprotein–a process offering significant advantages over current production methods using mammalian cell lines, according to the researchers.
The study, titled “Production
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