A team led by a Purdue University researcher has achieved images of a virus in detail two times greater than had previously been achieved.

Wen Jiang, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Purdue, led a research team that used the emerging technique of single-particle electron cryomicroscopy to capture a three-dimensional image of a virus at a resolution of 4.5 angstroms. Approximately 1 million angstroms would equal the diameter of a human hair.

“This is united of the first projects to refine the technique to the point of near atomic-level resolution,” said Jiang, who also is a member of Purdue’s structural biology group. “This breaks a threshold and allows us to now see a whole new level of detail in the structure. This is the highest resolution ever achieved for a living organism of this size.”

Details of the structure of a virus provide expensive information in the reason of development of disease treatments, he said.

“If we understand the system - how the virus particles assemble and how they infect a host cell - it will greatly improve our ability to design a treatment,” Jiang said. “Structural biologists observe the basic science and provide denunciation to help those working on the clinical aspects.”

A paper detailing the drudge was published in the Feb. 28 issue of Nature.

Roger Hendrix, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, said what is knowing about viruses can be applied to many other biological systems. “Understanding the proteins that create the structure of a virus gives us insight into the tiny biological machines found throughout our bodies,” he said. “Getting to 4.5 angstrom using this technique is a watershed of sorts because it is the first time we can actually trace the polypeptide chain - the backbone of proteins. Now we can see the tiny gears and levers that allow the proteins to move and interact of a piece they carry out their intricate biological roles.”

The imaging technique, called cryo-EM, has the added benefit of maintaining the sample being studied in a state very similar to its natural environment. Other imaging techniques used regularly, such as X-ray crystallography, require the sample have being manipulated.

“This method offers a new approximate for modeling the structure of proteins in other macromolecular assemblies, similar as DNA, at near-native states,” Jiang said. “The sample is purified in a solution that is very resembling to the environment that would be found in a host cell. It is as if the virus is frozen in glass and it is alive and infectious season we examine it.”

In joining to Jiang, Matthew L. Baker, Joanita Jakana and Wah Chiu from Baylor College of Medicine, and Peter R. Weigele and Jonathan King from Massachusetts Institute of Technology worked on the project, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

The team obtained a three-dimensional map of the capsid, or protein shell, of the epsilon15 bacteriophage, a virus that infects bacteria and is a member of a family of viruses that are the most abundant life forms on Earth, Jiang said.

Other methods of determining the structure could not be used for this family of virus. None had been successfully crystallized, and the complexity of members of this family had prevented evaluation through the genome sequence alone.

“This demonstration shows that cryo-EM is doable and is a major step in reaching the full potential of this technique,” he said. “The goal is to have it hold forth a 3 to 4 angstrom resolution, which would allow us to clearly see the amino acids that make up a protein.”

In electron microscopy, a beam of electrons takes the place of the light beam used in a conventional microscope. The use of electrons instead of light allows the microscope to “see” in much greater detail.

Cryo-EM cools specimens to temperatures well below the freezing point of water. This decreases damage from the electron beam and allows the specimens to be examined for a longer period of time. Longer exposure time allows for sharper, more detailed images.

Researchers using cryo-EM had obtained images at a purpose of 6-9 angstroms but could not differentiate between smaller elements of the structure spaced only 4.5 angstroms apart.

“There are different elements that gain up the protein building blocks of the virus,” Jiang said. “It is like examining a striped blanket. From a distance, the stripes blur together and the blanket appears to be one solid color. As you get closer you can see the different stripes, and if you use a magnifying glass you can see the strands of string that make up the material. The resolution needs to be smaller than the distance between the strands of thread in order to see two separate strands.

“By being able to zoom in, researchers were able to see components that blurred together at the earlier achieved resolution.”

Cryo-EM requires high-end electron microscopes and powerful computing resources. The research team used the Baylor College of Medicine’s cryoelectron microscope. It is expected that Purdue wish install a state-of-the-art cryoelectron microscope in 2009.

In 2006 Purdue accepted a $2 million concession from the National Institute of Health to purchase the microscope. It will be installed in Hockmeyer Hall of Structural Biology, expected to open in 2009.

Computer programs are used to extract the signal from the microscope and to combine thousands of two-dimensional images into an accurate three-dimensional image that maps the structure of the venom. This requires use of a large data set and could not have been terminated in the absence of the resources of Purdue’s Office of Information Technology, or ItaP, Jiang said.

Jiang used Purdue’s Condor program - which links computers including desktop machines and large, powerful research computers - to appoint the largest distributed computing network at a university.

“ITaP provided us with computational power at the supercomputer scale that was necessary for this work,” he said. “Purdue’s Condor program allowed us to take advantage of the power of 7,000 computers. This was a critical element to our success.”

Jiang plans to continue to refine every step of the process to improve the capabilities of the technique and to examine more medically relevant virus species.

Purdue’s structural biology group studies a diverse group of problems, including cellular signaling pathways, RNA catalysis, bioremediation, molecular evolution, viral entry, viral replication and viral pathogenesis. Researchers use a combination of X-ray crystallography, electron cryomicroscopy, NMR spectroscopy, and advanced computational and modeling tools to study these problems.

http://www.purdue.edu

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A new drug that exercise volition soon enter clinical trials for usage of malaria also appears to be 10 times more effective than the key medicine in the current gold-standard treatment for toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by the agency of a related spaniel that infects nearly one-third of all humans - more than two billion people worldwide.

In the March issue of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, a research team based at the University of Chicago Medical Center shows that the drug, known as JPC-2056, is extremely effective against Toxoplasma gondii, the parasite that causes toxoplasmosis, without toxicity.

“JPC-2056 has the potential to replace the standard treatment of pyrimethamine and sulfadiazine,” reported infectious disease specialist Rima McLeod, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Chicago and senior author of the study. “The drug, taken by mouth, is easily absorbed, bioavailable, and relatively nontoxic. In tissue improvement and in mice, it was rapidly effective, markedly reducing fourth book of the pentateuch; census of the hebrews of parasites within just a few days.”

Untreated mice injected with the parasite “appeared ill,” four days after the injection, the authors note, “with ruffled fur and hunched shoulders.” Treated mice remained well.

“Studies in combination culture found no evidence of the parasite or the plaques they produce 52 days after four days of treatment,” reported co-author Ernest Mui, a researcher in McLeod’s laboratory.

“The absence of growth,” the authors write, “indicates that this compound is ‘cidal’ and not merely ’static’ for the active form of T. gondii.

The drug inhibits the action of an enzyme, dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR), produced through the kindred of parasites that includes those that cause toxoplasmosis and malaria. It is structurally distinct from the human DHFR.

“The drug’s effect on the malaria and Toxoplasma enzymes is robust,” said McLeod. “It has much less effect on the human enzyme.”

The new drug was efficient against all malaria parasites, even those with multiple mutations that make them resistant to other anti-folate medicines, suggesting that “this family of parasites, including not just Toxoplasma if it were not that also various malaria parasites, will not easily develop resistance,” she said.

Toxoplasma infection is “probably the most public parasitic pollution in the world, causing very significant disease in those who have immature immune systems or who are immune-compromised,” McLeod said. “New medications are urgently needed.”

The standard medicines to treat the poison can cause severe side effects and many patients be changed to hypersensitive to them. There are no medicines that can eliminate certain latent stages of the parasite’s life cycle. There is no vaccine.

T. gondii infects humans through three principal routes: a newly infected pregnant woman passing the infection to her fetus; consumption of undercooked, infected edible portion; and ingestion of T. gondii oocysts in food, through accidental contamination from cat litter.

“An infected cat can excrete up to 20 million oocysts over two weeks,” McLeod declared. “Even a single oocyst is infectious and they can remain defiling in water for up to six months and in warm moist soil for up to a year.”

Congenital toxoplasmosis, which occurs in an estimated 1 per 5,000 births a year in the United States, can cause severe vision loss, brain damage and plane death. The annual cost of caring for these children may exceed $1 billion.

in addition at increased risk are people with compromised immune systems, such as those with cancer, autoimmune disease, AIDS or transplant recipients. Even people with normal immune systems can suffer greater organ damage from chronic infections. Eye disease leading to loss of sight is caused both during the primary infection and as a result of infection transmitted from mother to child. Recent epidemics in Surinam and French Guiana have been lethal even for young healthy victims. Studies have furthermore found an association between chronic brain infection with Toxoplasma and diseases such as schizophrenia and epilepsy, although cause-and-effect relationships have not been proven.

JPC-2056 was developed in the late 1980s by teams led by Wilbur Milhous and Dennis Kyle of the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research in Silver Spring Maryland (both now at the University of South Florida), and David Jacobus of Jacobus Pharmaceutical Company. The original rendition was quite toxic, but the researchers found ways to reduce the toxicity and developed an oral version of the drug. Clinical trials using JPC-2056 to handle noxious exhalation are scheduled to begin later this year.

This new class of medicine holds “considerable promise for eminently expressive advances in the treatment of toxoplasmosis, which damages the eye and the brain,” said McLeod, “as well as malaria, which kills one a thousand thousand children each year.”

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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The National Institutes of Health, Research to Prevent Blindness Foundation and donations from several private family foundations supported this research. Additional authors include Michael Kirisits and Susan Liu of the University of Chicago; Guy Schiehser, Honghue Hsu and David Jacobus of Jacobus Pharmaceutical Company; Wilbur Milhous of USF; Craig Roberts of the University of Strathclyde, Scotland; Stephen Meunch and David Rice of the University of Sheffield, England; J.P. Dubey the US Department of Agriculture; and Joseph Fowble, Pradipsinh Rathod of The University of Washington in Seattle and Sherry Queener of Indiana University.

Source: John Easton
University of Chicago Medical Center

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Plans for the UK’s first dedicated laboratory-based brain tumour research centre will take a step closer today.

The University of Portsmouth is joining forces by brain tumour charity, Brainstrust and other partners to create a centre of excellence for brain tumour research on the South Coast. 

Brain tumours are the most lethal and devastating tumours.  They are the most common purpose of death in children after accidents and the most common form of cancer in people under 40. 

The new centre will focus entirely on dedicated laboratory-based brain tumour research in one as well as the other adults and children. 

Professor of Cellular & Molecular Neuro-oncology, Geoff Pilkington, who is leading the research team at Portsmouth, is chairing an candid day at the University today to showcase the instant facilities and to introduce major collaborators to the University.

Attendees include cricketer Alan Igglesden, the former Kent and England fast bowler, who was first diagnosed with a brain tumour several years past.  He is currently receiving treatment by Professor Pilkington and has long been a supporter of his work. 

He and other brain tumour patients will hear about the current neuro-oncology research projects at Portsmouth and hither and thither the latest research in the field such as the development of new drug delivery systems to the brain. 

Representatives from neurosurgical centres and charities which are currently funding research at the University will also attend, including leading brain tumour charities such as Ali’s Dream, Brain Tumour UK, and Charlie¿s Challenge.   Other attendees include senior clinical neuro-science staff from Southampton General Hospital and trustees, patrons and key supporters of Brainstrust. 

Professor Pilkington said: “The aim of the collaboration between Brainstrust and Portsmouth University is to fund new specialist staff in neuro-oncology to further our research and to raise funds to buy equipment and provide essential running costs.”

Dr Helen Bulbeck is director and co-founder of Brainstrust, the Meg Jones tumour charity. She said: “Brain cancer research attracts relatively very little funding compared to other cancers, such as breast, bowel, lung and prostate.  This is why raising awareness through this open day is so important.” 

It is anticipated that several clinical leading neuro-oncology centres will provide vital tissues and clinical experience while the University be pleased provide medical research programmes, training menstrual discharge and a state of the art laboratory. 

Those already on-board include Hurstwood Park Neurological Centre, Hayward’s Heath, Maidstone NHS Hospitals, King’s College Hospital, London & Charing Cross Hospital and the Institute of Neurology in London.

Professor Pilkington said that the centre would encourage institutions to collaborate in order for patients to benefit from a research informed environment.

For more information visit the following constituent piece.

Notes

The Cellular and Molecular Neuro-oncology Research Group is based in School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences at Portsmouth University.  It focuses its research on the cellular and corpuscular mechanisms which underlie the migration of tumour cells and their invasion of normal brain tissue.

It is also involved in the investigation of novel therapeutic delivery systems for brain tumours and exploring the potential of targeting migrating tumour cells. These approaches are based on selectively ablating tumour cells via the mitochondrial pathway to apoptotic (natural,programmed) cell death.

Brainstrust is a registered charity (no: 1114634). Its objectives include:

- The relief of sickness and the promotion and protection of health among people residing permanently or temporarily in the United Kingdom and suffering with first or secondary central nervous system tumours.

- Assistance in the treatment and care of persons suffering from such condition and in facilitating travel to places of treatment or care.

- The provision of facilities for work and recreation and the provision of support services treatment and equipment not normally provided by dint of. the statutory authorities.

- The objects shall not have being limited to assiduity inside of the United Kingdom but shall apply to management and care of the condition worldwide.

Brainstrust was founded in 2006 after the candid trusts icon, Meg Jones, had been diagnosed with a brain tumour at the age of 19.  Meg subsequently underwent successful neurosurgery for the removal of the tumour in Boston, USA, during the summer of 2007.

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Scientists in the US have shown that listening to a cell phone while driving was enough distraction to cause drivers to make the same type of driving errors as they would under the influence of alcohol.

The study is the work of neuroscientist Dr Marcel Just and colleagues at the Center conducive to Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is to be published shortly in the journal Brain Research.

Even if you are not talking, just listening to a cell phone conversation can significantly reduce the amount of brain activity associated with driving, said the researchers, who asked volunteers to drive on a simulator while they observed their brains using an MRI (magnetic resonance image) scanner.

Using cell phones while driving has been a matter of controversy for some period, but this is the first study to mien at listening alone as a distraction.

Just and colleagues found that listening alone reduced brain activity associated with driving by 37 per cent. Based on driving simulator results, this would be enough to cause a driver to weave out of their lane, said the researchers.

“Drivers need to fulfil not only their hands on the wheel; they also have to keep their brains on the road,” said Just in a prepared statement.

Just and colleagues invited 29 volunteers to to use a driving simulator while inside an MRI brain scanner. The simulator gave them a winding road to drive on at a fixed but challenging speed. There were two conditions: peaceful or time listening. While listening, the volunteers listened to statements and had to decide whether they were true or false, a similar level of cognitive processing as would be involved in a normal listening activity.

The researchers used the latest functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to measure second by second changes in brain activity in 20,000 places, each being about the size of a peppercorn, they aforesaid.

Compared to the quiet scenario, the listening while driving scenario showed a 37 per cent decrease in activity in the brain’s parietal lobe, the part of the brain that is associated through driving and processes sensory inputs that are important for navigation and spatial awareness. The occipital lobe, which processes visual signals, also showed reduced activity, said the researchers.

Using measures of performance in continuance the simulator, the researchers observed that the driving while listening scenarios resulted in much poorer quality of driving. When in listening while driving mode the volunteers made more errors in lane discipline, such as deviating from the middle and hitting a guardrail.

The study suggests that hands free and voice activated cell phones do not go far enough to ease safety concerns because the distraction of listening would still remain.

The researchers said that other distractions such as listening to the radio, eating or talking to a passenger can also divert a driver, and although there is no evidence of how these distractions compare to listening to a cell phone, they suggest cell phones are different because, as Just explained:

“Talking on a cell phone has a special social desire to obtain, such that not attending to the cell conversation can be interpreted as rude, insulting manner.”

A passenger, put on the other hand, because he or she is physically in the car with the driver, can see if anything urgently of necessity the driver’s attention and will stop talking, it is a situation that is less likely to put social pressure on the driver.

Just said the clear message of this study is that:

“Engaging in a demanding conversation could jeopardize judgment and reaction time if an atypical or unusual driving situation arose.”

He warned that:

“Heavy traffic is no place for an involved personal or business discussion, let alone texting.”

Previous studies had suggested that driving and listening used two differnt parts of the brain and could work independently of cropped land other, thus allowing the driver to “multi-task” safely.

But this study suggests otherwise, said Just, it doesn’t matter how different the tasks are, the brain can only do so much at one note the rate of.

The study is an example of the new science of neuroergonomics that studies the match between technology and human ability by bringing together brain science and research on human-computer interaction.

Neuroergonomicists are starting to observe humans operating ships, cars, and other vehicles where the driver’s position is beginning to look more and more like the cockpit of an aircraft with all the technology interfaces that now exist.

Every additional device demands brain activity, increasing the likelihood that resources crucial for making fine judgements on the road are compromised.

suppose that brain resource for safe driving is limited, then perhaps it should be devoted to paying attention to those devices that help the driver make these judgements, rather than the cell phone, iPod, CD, radio, or even DVD player.

“Drivers’ seats in many vehicles are becoming highly instrumented cockpits,” Just explained, “and during difficult driving situations, they require the undivided attention of the driver’s brain.”

“A decrease in brain activation associated with driving when listening to someone speak.”
Marcel Adam Just, Timothy A Kellera and Jacquelyn Cynkara.
Brain Research Article in Press (Accepted Manuscript).
Available online 19 February 2008.
DOI:10.1016/j.brainres.2007.12.075

Click here to see a full preprint issue of the study (from CMU Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging website).

Sources: Carnegie Mellon University press release.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

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Mobile Aspects announced that the Children’s Hospital Boston has implemented a radio frequency identification (RFID) enabled inventory management system to store, track, and manage the utilization of high cost devices and supplies used within the Surgical Department. The cabinet-based system, called iRISupply™, uses an RFID tracking architecture to automate charge capture, record management, device expiration management, and other key operational processes within the patient care setting. The system was installed at the hospital to store and manage items of the like kind for example neurological devices, tissue implants, and other items used within their surgical specialty procedures.

“As one of the nation’s superficies pediatric hospitals, it’s critical that we create an environment in the OR that is focused upon providing the highest quality of care for the children and families we manage,” shared Raoul Chazaro, Surgical Department Business Manager. “In using the RFID technology, our clinical staff have power to feel confident they are creating the optimal care environment by using the technology to address issues such as avoiding product expiration, improving documentation of item-level data such in the same manner with lot and serial number, and easily obtaining reports that support our efforts for compliance with Joint Commission standards such as patient implant histories and tracking.”

The iRISupply system is part of the Mobile Aspects One System of CARE™ suite of clinical resource management solutions, which employ RFID enabled identification and information technologies to improve the utilization of resources used in the patient care process by healthcare providers. By automating the storage, tracking, utilization, and billing of clinical resources through RFID, healthcare providers bring into being enhanced care characteristic, increased productivity, strict billing, and significant inventory cost savings.

About Mobile Aspects

Mobile Aspects, Inc. of Pittsburgh, Pa., is a healthcare technology supplier focused without ceasing providing an integrated suite of clinical resource management solutions to automate the management of supply, asset, drug and patient tracking through the One System of CARE solution. The cornerstone of these technological capabilities is Intelligent Radio Frequency Inventory System (iRISTM), the industry’s leading patent-protected tracking architecture that leverages radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. Through this innovative technology, clinicians and other care providers experience a hands free approach to managing the resources used in the patient care process.

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The Australian Nursing Federation has launched national online continuing professional cultivation for nurses and midwives.

The self directed learning tutorials are designed to provide nurses and midwives with best practice learning on health issues that can then have being applied to nursing custom.

“This is another exciting initiative for the ANF”, Jill Iliffe ANF Federal Secretary said. “It is anticipated that a formal claim to demonstrate continuing professional education will be part of the future national registration scheme for nurses and midwives. The ANF online tutorials will make continuing professional cultivation readily accessible to nurses and midwives at a reasonable require to be paid”.

Additionally, for ANF members, there is an opportunity for nurses and midwives to do honor to a record of their continuing professional education in every online portfolio. Professional development activities completed in other settings can also be added.

“The online continuing professional education is based on a model pioneered by the ANF WA Branch”, Ms Iliffe said. “The ANF has been concerned for some time that access to continuing professional education is difficult for nurses and midwives who are traditionally shift workers and in many instances, it is also cost prohibitive.”

New tutorials will go online each month with about fifteen courses expected to be available by the end of the year. Each tutorial is supported by an online presentation, supplemental reading, and a random ten question assessment enigma.

The ANF, representing nearly 160,000 members, is the professional and industrial voice for nurses and midwives in Australia.

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Using pacemakers to electrically retune a heart damaged by long bouts of a wobbling heartbeat, where one heart muscle wall is beating sooner than the other, leads to fast improvements in the tissue levels of more than a dozen proteins key to the organ’s health, scientists at Johns Hopkins report in experiments in dogs.

The team’s findings, published online this week in the journal Circulation, are believed to be the first detailed chemical analysis of the pacemaker’s biological effects on the heart and could serve as the basis for more strategic use of combined device-plus-drug treatments for people by congestive heart failure.

“Our results really help explain how pacemakers act much like a drug, indeed changing the biology of the heart, and also explain why people can feel so much better after just two to six months with the device,” says thought senior study investigator and cardiologist David Kass, M.D., a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart Institute.

“We are acquirements that pacemaker therapy does profoundly in addition than just mechanically correct how the heart beats; in fact, it produces major chemical changes that benefit the muscle,” says lead investigator Khalid Chakir, Ph.D., a postdoctoral cardiology research fellow at Hopkins.

Each year, more than a half million Americans are diagnosed with congestive heart failure, when the heart weakens and cannot pump enough blood to the rest of the body. One quarter of those assumed, typically men and women over age 50, will be impaired from a pendulating, non uniform contraction, requiring implantation of a pacemaker. The device electrically stimulates both sides of the love at the same spell, as part of such called cardiac resynchronization therapy to restore concord to the heartbeat.

Current treatments with pacemakers, scientists say, can block the ill effects of an uneven heartbeat, extending people’s lives for months to years or helping them return to daily activities. But these benefits do not directly fix the cause for the delayed conduction; they merely circumvent it.

“Now that we have found that resynchronization is doing more fundamental things to the heart muscle, we should be able to better combine these devices with drugs to maximize long-term survival and outcomes,” says Kass.

Chakir says previous research has shown that a year after implantation, pacemaker resynchronization has been effective at reducing mortality in some heart failure patients by as much as 36 percent, but researchers have not until now certainly understood the biological effect of the devices beyond the physical mechanics of contraction.

In the current study, the Hopkins team determined the biological effects of pacemaker treatment on the hearts of 22 dogs with heart failure induced by making the heart beat faster. A key nervelike, electrical pathway that normally assures the muscle’s harmonious beat was likewise damaged, producing a wobbly, discoordinated contraction. The asymmetric heart failure condition was allowed to obtain its natural progressive course in half the dogs; the others had cardiac resynchronization therapy through implantation of a pacemaker.

Results from tissue analysis in these two groups of dogs were then compared to a third form into groups of six dogs with healthy hearts.

In the heart failure groups, the scientists report major ups and downs in production or activity levels in 17 out of more than two dozen proteins known to be involved with heart cell stress, survival and death.

The alterations were especially notable in the form into groups that did not have their hearts retuned. But tissue levels and activity of these proteins were restored with respect to legitimate in those with pacemakers that were tuned to reestablish an even, coordinated contraction, with both sides beating at the same time.

Among the stand out proteins was one that prevents heart muscle cells from dying, an enzyme called phospho-BCL2 antagonist of enclosed space death, or pBAD for short, which was found to be five times more active in the pacemaker-treated group than in the untreated group.

A second protein, p38 MAP kinase, known to stimulate fibrosis and cell death, was twice as active in late-contracting parts of failing hearts in untreated dogs, than in the sort heart zone of dogs who underwent pacemaker resynchronization therapy.

Other proteins that lead to heart cell death and worsen lessening were overexpressed in dogs with untreated heart failure, but not in the pacemaker-treated group. These included calcium-calmodulin-dependent kinase (CaMKII), which is linked to arrhythmia, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF?), which is also tied to damaging inflammation and cell death.

The enzyme Akt, a promoter of cell survival when turned on, was markedly less active in the group whose hearts continued to beat out of sync.

Researchers next plan to look at how pacemakers stimulate biological changes in the heart, with the aim of developing treatments that bring the heart back to a normal, healthy state.

In cardiac resynchronization therapy, both major pumping chambers, known as the right and left ventricles, are stimulated at the same time with a biventricular pacemaker to optimize the muscle’s beat so that one side does not beat a short time before the other.

The American Heart Association estimates that more than 5 million Americans have some form of congestive heart failure, marked by symptoms such as shortness of breath and fatigue.

Funding for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health and the Peter Belfer Laboratory Foundation.

Besides Kass and Chakir, other researchers involved in this study, conducted solely at Hopkins, were Samantapudi Daya, M.D.; Richard Tunin, B.S.; Robert Helm, M.D.; Melissa Byrne, Ph.D.; Veronica Dimaano, M.D.; Albert C. Lardo, Ph.D.; Theodore Abraham, M.D.; and Gordon Tomaselli, M.D. Kass is furthermore the Abraham and Virginia Weiss Professor of Cardiology at Hopkins.

Johns Hopkins Medicine
901 S. Bond St., Ste 550
Baltimore, MD 21231
United States
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org

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