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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arterial stiffness

ACC 2015: Newer heart risk calculator may better accounts for racial differences

A risk calculator for cardiovascular disease, developed as a companion for the 2013 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association cholesterol guidelines, may account for racial differences in sub-clinical vascular function better than the Framingham Risk Score, Emory cardiology researchers say.

Their findings are scheduled for presentation Monday at the American College of Cardiology meeting in San Diego.

African Americans, especially men, tend to have a higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease, but this differences are not reflected in the Framingham Risk score. Arterial stiffness is a sign of heart disease risk that tends to appear more prominently among African Americans than whites. Cardiovascular research fellow Jia Shen, MD, MPH, and Emory colleagues analyzed data on arterial stiffness and structure from 1235 people – 777 whites and 458 African-Americans — enrolled in two large studies (Center for Health Discovery and Well Being and META-Health). Read more

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Heart Leave a comment

Signs of future high blood pressure in college football players

College football players tend to have stiffer arteries than other college students, even before their college athletic careers have started, cardiology researchers have found.

Although football players had lower blood pressure in the pre-season than a control group of undergraduates, stiffer arteries could potentially predict players’ future high blood pressure, a risk factor for stroke and heart disease later in life.

Researchers studied 50 freshman American-style football players from two Division I programs, Georgia Tech and Harvard, in the pre-season and compared them with 50 healthy Emory undergraduates, who were selected to roughly match their counterparts in age and race. The research is part of a longer ongoing study of cardiovascular health in Georgia Tech college football players.

The results were presented Saturday at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Washington DC, by cardiology research fellow Jonathan Kim, MD. Kim worked with Arshed Quyyumi, MD, director of Emory’s Clinical Cardiovascular Research Institute, Aaron Baggish, MD, associate director of the Cardiovascular Performance Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, and their colleagues.

“It’s remarkable that these vascular differences are apparent in the pre-season, when the players are essentially coming out of high school,” says Kim. “We aim to gain additional insight by following their progress during the season.”

Despite being physically active and capable, more than half of college football players were previously found to develop hypertension by the end of their first season. Professional football players also tend to have higher blood pressure, even though other risk factors such as cholesterol and blood sugar look good, studies have found. Researchers have previously proposed that the intense stop-and-start nature of football as well as the physical demands of competitive participation, such as rapid weight gain, could play roles in making football distinctive in its effects on cardiovascular health.

In the current study, the control undergraduates had higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure than the football players: (football players: 111/63; control: 118/72). However, the football players displayed significantly higher pulse wave velocity, a measure of arterial stiffness (football: 6.5 vs control: 5.7). Pulse wave velocity is measured by noninvasive devices that track the speed of blood flow by calculating differences between arteries in the neck and the leg.

“It is known that in other populations, increased pulse wave velocity precedes the development of hypertension,” Kim says. “We plan to test this relationship for football players.”

The football players were markedly taller and larger than the control group (187 vs 178 centimeters in height, body mass index 29.2 vs 23.7). The football players also reported participating in more hours of weight-training per week than the control group (5.4 vs 2.6).

 

 

 

 

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Quinn Eastman in Heart Leave a comment

Fat distribution in black and white women may help predict heart disease

A woman’s body shape – often described as pear, apple or hourglass – is usually determined by the amount of fat in various regions of the body including the bust, waist, arms and hips. New research from Emory University School of Medicine suggests that these patterns of fat distribution may help predict arterial stiffness – a precursor to cardiovascular disease.

Stiff arteries make the heart work harder to pump blood and are associated with atherosclerosis, or the buildup of plaques in vessels that can block blood flow and cause a heart attack.

Noting that fat distribution generally differs between black and white women’s bodies, researchers enlisted 68 black women and 125 white women, all middle-aged, to see whether these patterns could help assess cardiovascular risk.

The study, conducted by Danny Eapen, MD, a cardiology fellow at Emory, used data from Emory’s Center for Health Discovery and Well Being. He presented his findings recently at the American Heart Association’s Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology 2011 meeting.

Using skin calipers, the researchers measured subcutaneous fat in seven sites: the upper chest; midaxillary, or the side of the torso just under the armpit; triceps, or the back of the arm; subscapular, or on the back just below the shoulder blade; abdominal; suprailiac, or just above the front of the hip bone; and the thigh.

“Black women have higher rates of cardiovascular disease than white women and are more likely to die from it,” says Eapen. “Black and white women also have different patterns of fat distribution, so we were interested in measuring these pockets of fat at various regions of the body to evaluate whether it might be helpful in predicting cardiovascular risk between the two groups.  Our hope was to evaluate whether a quick, easy-to-use clinical tool could aid in further risk stratifying our female patients.”

The study also assessed the arterial stiffness of the women, adjusting for heart rate.

As a group, the black women had greater arterial stiffness than the white women. They also had more subcutaneous fat in the armpit, triceps, shoulder blade and hip bone areas.

In addition, they also found specific race dependent pockets of fat that could be related to arterial stiffness – fat measurements in the triceps area could predict increased arterial stiffness in black women, while fat in the suprailiac areas was a predictor in white women.

Content contributed in part by Sarah Goodwin, Emory’s Center for Health Discovery and Well Being.

Posted on May 27, 2011 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment