Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more

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Possible diabetes drug/stent interaction

Diabetes and heart disease often intersect. Emory cardiologist Aloke Finn and his colleagues recently had two papers in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and in Atherosclerosis describing a possible interaction between the widely used diabetes drug metformin and drug-eluting stents, which are used to to treat coronary artery disease. Anwer Habib, MD is the first author of both papers.

The stent props the once-blocked artery open while the drugs in the stents are supposed to prevent the artery from becoming blocked again. The drugs — usually mTOR inhibitors such as http://www.magliettedacalcioit.com everolimus or the newer zotarolimus — slow down cell growth, but this cuts both ways. The drugs slow down the recovery of the lining of the blood vessel and this may contribute to blood clot formation after stent placement.

In cultured human cells and in rabbits with implanted stents, Finn and colleagues showed that metformin augmented the effect of mTOR inhibitors on regrowth of the blood vessel lining. (However — the authors acknowledge that their animal model was not diabetic or atherosclerotic.)

The findings could mean that people taking metformin would need to take medications to prevent blood clotting medications for a longer time after stent placement. The authors say that clinical studies following patients who receive drug-eluting stents should look at metformin’s effects on blood clotting events. A study examining drug eluting stents in diabetic patients is in the works at Emory.

 

Posted on by Quinn Eastman in Heart Leave a comment