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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cardiovascular disease risk

Elevated troponin after exercise refines cardiac risk prediction

High levels of troponin, a sign of acute stress to the heart, in the blood reveal whether someone recently experienced a heart attack. Advances in testing have made it possible to detect much lower levels of troponin — but still elevated above zero. For example, elevated troponin can be detected after strenuous exercise, even in healthy young athletes.

With that exercise-induced response in mind, Emory Clinical Cardiovascular Research Institute investigators have been studying whether high-sensitivity troponin measurements might be used to replace cardiac stress tests. These procedures are expensive and sometimes involve nuclear imaging, which exposes patients to radiation.

A new paper in American Journal of Cardiology shows how elevated high-sensitivity troponin levels in response to exercise on a treadmill can predict future outcomes in patients with coronary artery disease — better than stress tests with imaging.

Read more

Posted on September 23, 2020 by Quinn Eastman in Heart Leave a comment

Aging, CVD risk factors and progenitor cells

Cardiologists Ibhar Al Mheid, Arshed Quyyumi and colleagues from Emory’s Clinical Cardiovascular Research Institute recently published a paper that weaves together insights from past research on circulating progenitor cells. They tease apart the influences of age and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors on these cells, whose regenerative capacity has made them the target of much investigation. From this research, one can infer that the circulatory system has a limited regenerative capacity, and stress upon the system earlier in life depletes it later.

Circulating progenitor cells are rare cells in the blood that can become white or red blood cells, as well as endothelial cells, which line blood vessels and repair them when damaged by cardiovascular disease. Quyyumi and his colleagues have sought to deliver progenitor cells, derived from the patient’s own bone marrow, to the heart – or less invasively, spur them out of the bone marrow with drugs. Read more

Posted on August 16, 2016 by Quinn Eastman in Heart Leave a comment

Education is a life preserver, after heart attack

For the last decade, cardiology researchers have been collecting detailed information on the patients who come through Emory’s catheterization labs. The density of data (close to 7000 people) can make it possible to achieve some insights about mortality in American society.

Cardiology research fellow Salim Hayek, MD, presented some provocative findings yesterday in a poster competition at the American College of Physicians meeting in Boston. He has been working with Arshed Quyyumi, MD and colleagues at Emory’s Clinical Cardiovascular Research Institute.

Their analysis shows “college education as a discrete indicator of socioeconomic status was an independent predictor of survival.”

A key thing to remember when looking at this data is that most of the people in the cath lab at a given moment are not actually having a heart attack — just 13 percent are. (Abstract/poster available upon request). However, there’s enough suspicion or history of heart disease for doctors to take a look inside; most of them have hypertension and coronary artery disease, and many have had a heart attack in the past. The group is mostly men, average age 63. Read more

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Heart Leave a comment

Evaluating a different way to measure LDL

What is the most important measurement of cholesterol or lipids in the blood, when it comes to cardiovascular disease risk? LDL-C [low density lipoprotein cholesterol], is often called “bad cholesterol” because it is linked to atherosclerosis, but the landscape is always shifting. Even as cardiologists across the country get used to the new AHA/ACC guidelines, which call for changes in how physicians and patients view LDL-C, new research is focusing attention on other related markers. For example, a recent pair of studies in the New England Journal of Medicine identify gene mutations that lower both triglycerides and heart disease risk, suggesting that drugs that target that gene pathway could be beneficial. A new paper in Atherosclerosis, coauthored by Emory’s Terry Jacobson, looks at LDL-P, a different way of looking at LDL that has been proposed to be a better measure of cardiovascular disease risk. Jacobson is director of the Office of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at Grady Health Systems. Read more

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Quinn Eastman in Heart Leave a comment