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Measuring the human pulse from tiny head movements to help diagnose cardiac disease | KurzweilAI

Measuring the human pulse from tiny head movements to help diagnose cardiac disease | KurzweilAI | Longevity science | Scoop.it

Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a new algorithm that can accurately measure the heart rates of people depicted in ordinary digital video by analyzing imperceptibly small head movements that accompany the rush of blood caused by the heart’s contractions.

 

In tests, the algorithm gave pulse measurements that were consistently within a few beats per minute of those produced by electrocardiograms (EKGs). It was also able to provide useful estimates of the time intervals between beats, a measurement that can be used to identify patients at risk for cardiac events.

 

A video-based pulse-measurement system could be useful for monitoring newborns or the elderly, whose sensitive skin could be damaged by frequent attachment and removal of EKG leads.

 

 

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Food Supplement CoQ10 Cuts Death Rates Among Heart Failure Patients

Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) cuts mortality by half in patients with heart failure, researchers from Denmark reported at the annual meeting of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology, which took place in Lisbon, Portugal this year.

Professor Svend Aage Mortensen and team explained that Coq10 is the first medication to improve heart failure mortality in over ten years and should be included in standard treatment. CoQ10 is an essential enzyme that occurs naturally in the body. It works as an electron carrier in the mitochondria, the energy-producing powerhouse of cells, to produce energy. CoQ10 is also a potent antioxidant.

 

 

Ray and Terry's 's insight:

Ubiquinol is the bioavailable form of CoQ10 and a more effective supplement choice. Statin users often find their muscle pain is gone after supplementing with this enzyme.

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Pets may help cut heart disease risk: American Heart Association

Anyone wanting to live longer and cut their risk of suffering from heart disease might want to consider getting a pet.

 

The American Heart Association (AHA) issued a scientific statement on Thursday saying owning a pet may help to decrease a person's risk of suffering from heart disease and is linked with lower levels of obesity, blood pressure and cholesterol.

 

 

Joe Rowlands's curator insight, May 14, 2013 7:26 AM

Having a dog is the best excuse for getting out and about. When you have a pet you meet the nicest of people and both you and your pet get healthy exercise......everyone wins

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New gene therapy trials aim to mend broken hearts

Researchers said on Tuesday they planned to enroll patients into two new clinical trials using Mydicar, a gene therapy treatment made by privately held U.S. biotech company Celladon.

After more than 20 years of research, the ground-breaking method for fixing faulty genes is starting to deliver, with European authorities approving the first gene therapy for an rare metabolic disease last November.

In the case of heart failure, the aim is to insert a gene called SERCA2a directly into heart cells using a modified virus, delivered via a catheter infusion. Lack of SERCA2a leads to ever weaker pumping in people with heart failure.

 

 

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Micro-bubbles may help prevent heart attacks and strokes

Micro-bubbles may help prevent heart attacks and strokes | Longevity science | Scoop.it

Heart attack and stroke-causing plaque deposits in the arteries are typically preceded by an inflammation of the arteries in those same areas. Therefore, if doctors could be aware of those inflamed regions before plaque deposits formed and problems such as chest pains arose, a lot of hardship could potentially be avoided. Well, that soon may be possible, thanks to some tiny bubbles.

 

In tests conducted at the University of Missouri’s College of Veterinary Medicine, assistant teaching professor Isabelle Masseau started out with perfluorocarbon gas-containing, lipid-shelled “micro-bubbles.” Each of those bubbles measured just two to three microns in diameter.

 

 

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Radio waves used to wirelessly power tiny heart implant

Radio waves used to wirelessly power tiny heart implant | Longevity science | Scoop.it

How do you power an implant? Surgical battery replacement is undesirable...

 

Ada Poon, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, and doctoral candidates Sanghoek Kim and John Ho have demonstrated that it’s possible to construct a super-small implantable cardiac device the size of a 1.6 millimeter-wide cube.

 

The device uses gigahertz-frequency radio waves that can power extremely small devices five centimeters (1.96 in) inside the chest on the surface of the heart – a depth once thought impossible.

 

 

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Prawn Proteins Eased Blood Pressure

Prawn Proteins Eased Blood Pressure | Longevity science | Scoop.it

One in every four American adults has high blood pressure also known as hypertension.

For decades, it’s been clear that the long-chain omega-3 fatty acids in seafood (DHA and EPA) can produce a relatively small but significant drop in blood pressure.

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Epicatechin ingested via cocoa products reduc... [Am J Clin Nutr. 2012] - PubMed - NCBI

Epicatechin ingested via cocoa products reduc... [Am J Clin Nutr. 2012] - PubMed - NCBI | Longevity science | Scoop.it

Four meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials showed that cocoa consumption can reduce systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP).


This review examined the consistent connection with respect to epicatechin (flavanol found in cocoa).

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No Pulse: How Doctors Reinvented The Human Heart | Popular Science

No Pulse: How Doctors Reinvented The Human Heart | Popular Science | Longevity science | Scoop.it
This 10,000-rpm, no-pulse artificial heart doesn't resemble an organic heart--and might be all the better for it...

 

"The newest artificial heart doesn’t imitate the cardiac muscle at all. Instead, it whirs like a little propeller, pushing blood through the body at a steady rate."

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Microbubbles could image the heart and deliver anti-clotting drugs simultaneously

Microbubbles could image the heart and deliver anti-clotting drugs simultaneously | Longevity science | Scoop.it

A scientist with GE Global Research is now looking into the use of “microbubbles” as a mobile means of imaging the heart and possibly even treating it.

 

The bubbles that biologist Jason Castle is working with are described as “tiny gas-filled spheres the size of red bloods cells.” Delivered through an ordinary IV, they can travel through the bloodstream to the heart – or anywhere else.

 

 

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Scientists prevent heart failure in mice

Scientists prevent heart failure in mice | Longevity science | Scoop.it

Cardiac stress, for example a heart attack or high blood pressure, frequently leads to pathological heart growth and subsequently to heart failure. Two tiny RNA molecules play a key role in this detrimental development in mice, as researchers at the Hannover Medical School and the Göttingen Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry have now discovered. When they inhibited one of those two specific molecules, they were able to protect the rodent against pathological heart growth and failure. With these findings, the scientists hope to be able to develop therapeutic approaches that can protect humans against heart failure.

 

The scientists involved in this study had observed that these microRNAs are more prevalent in the cardiac muscle cells of mice suffering from cardiac hypertrophy. To determine the role that the two microRNAs play, the scientists bred genetically modified mice that had an abnormally large number of these molecules in their heart muscle cells. "These rodents developed cardiac hypertrophy and lived for only three to six months, whereas their healthy conspecifics had a normal healthy life-span of several years," explained Kamal Chowdhury, researcher in the Department of Molecular Cell Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. "For comparison, we also selectively switched off these microRNAs in other mice. These animals had a slightly smaller heart than their healthy conspecifics, but did not differ from them in behaviour or life-span," continued the biologist. The crucial point is when the scientists subjected the hearts of these mice to stress by narrowing the aorta, the mice did not develop cardiac hypertrophy – in contrast to normal mice.

 

The scientists were also able to protect normal mice against the disease. When they gave them a substance that selectively inhibits microRNA-132, no pathological cardiac growth occurred – even when the hearts of these mice were subjected to stress. "Thus, for the first time ever, we have found a molecular approach for treating pathological cardiac growth and heart failure in mice," said the cardiologist Thomas Thum, MD, Director of the Institute for Molecular and Translational Therapy Strategies (IMTTS) at the Hannover Medical School. With these findings, the researchers hope that they will be able to develop therapeutic approaches that can also protect humans against heart failure. "Such microRNA inhibitors, alone or in combination with conventional treatments, could represent a promising new therapeutic approach," said Thum.

 

"In mice with an overdosage of the two microRNAs in their heart muscle cells, the cellular ‘recycling program' is curbed," explained Ahmet Ucar, who together with Shashi K. Gupta was responsible for the experiments. In this recycling process, the cell breaks down components that are damaged or no longer required and reuses their constituents – a vital process that, for example, ensures the organism’s survival under stress conditions. In mice without the microRNAs -212 and 132, this recycling program is more active than in their normal conspecifics. Conceivably, the reduced cellular recycling could be a cause of the observed cardiac hypertrophy. 


Via Dr. Stefan Gruenwald
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Artificial heart tissue could replace and regrow the real thing

Artificial heart tissue could replace and regrow the real thing | Longevity science | Scoop.it

One of the things that makes heart disease so problematic is the fact that after a heart attack occurs, the scar tissue that replaces the damaged heart tissue isn’t capable of expanding and contracting – it doesn’t “beat,” in other words. This leaves the heart permanently weakened. Now, however, scientists from Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have developed artificial heart tissue that may ultimately provide a solution to that problem.

At the base of the material is a rubbery gel known as MeTro. It’s made from tropoelastin, which is the protein that gives human tissues their elasticity.

 

 

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Endogenous cardiac stem cells for the treatment of heart failure

Endogenous cardiac stem cells for the treatment of heart failure | Longevity science | Scoop.it

Recent data obtained from phase I clinical trials using endogenous cardiovascular progenitors isolated directly from the heart suggest that cell-based treatment for heart patients using stem cells that reside in the heart provides significant functional benefit and an improvement in patient outcome.

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CoQ10 can boost heart function in heart failure patients: Meta-analysis

CoQ10 can boost heart function in heart failure patients: Meta-analysis | Longevity science | Scoop.it

Data from randomized trials support the ability of co-enzyme Q10 (CoQ10) to improve heart function in people with congestive heart failure (CHF), say scientists from Tulane University in New Orleans.

 

The authors caution that the results are based on a small number of clinical trials, and that the benefit may be greatest for less severe cases of heart failure.

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HDL influences synthesis and absorption of cholesterol

HDL influences synthesis and absorption of cholesterol | Longevity science | Scoop.it

New research indicates that HDL concentrations in the blood influence the synthesis and absorption of cholesterol by the body, besides being linked to how insulin impacts on the metabolism of glucose. HDL, or high-density lipoprotein, is also commonly referred to as "good cholesterol."

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“Good” Cholesterol May Not Be So Good After All | Singularity Hub

“Good” Cholesterol May Not Be So Good After All | Singularity Hub | Longevity science | Scoop.it

Is “good” cholesterol really so good?

 

In a recent meta analysis, HDL was help under scrutiny for its potential link to lower heart disease. The analysis suggests that raising HDL levels may not directly result in a lower risk of heart disease.

 

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Vaccine to stop heart attacks could be here in 5 years

Vaccine to stop heart attacks could be here in 5 years | Longevity science | Scoop.it
A vaccine delivered in an injection or nasal spray to prevent heart attacks could be available within five years. The vaccine can cut the build up of fat in arteries by up to 70 per cent, according to tests by researchers at Lund University in Sweden. The fatty deposits cause arteries to narrow, meaning the body has to work harder to pump blood, and can lead to a heart attack.

 

Prof Peter Weissberg, the British Heart Foundation medical director, said the vaccine was "very promising".

Via Dr. Stefan Gruenwald
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