ATHEROSCLEROSIS and CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE

cardiovascular disease or CVD refers to a variety of problems with the heart or blood vessels including heart attacks heart failure and stroke together they are the number one cause of death globally estimated at nearly 18 million deaths in 2015 and rising initial symptoms such as unexplained chest pains or exhaustion after only moderate physical exertion are frequently ignored and thus many patients are only treated after suffering a heart attack or stroke the aim of the EU funded project sis Vasc was to use a systems medicine approach to better understand the development of CVD and defined so-called biomarkers for it researchers hope that by using a comprehensive collection of clinical and experimental data to generate computer models of the disease they could identify novel molecular targets suitable for early disease prediction in many cases cardiovascular disease is caused by the chronic inflammatory condition atherosclerosis due to unhealthy eating habits and a lack of exercise deposits of fat cholesterol and other substances present in the blood build up over many years inside the arteries white blood cells are attracted triggering an inflammatory process over time the resulting plaques cause the arteries to narrow and harden obstructing blood flow however not all patients appear to have stable plaques which build up and eventually limit blood flow some patients suffer from unstable plaques which pose an additional threat unstable plaques are prone to sudden rupture which causes local blood clotting and may even completely block vessels if this happens in the coronary artery the heart may become starved of oxygen resulting in the death of cardiac muscle cells and heart attack [Music] physical exercise in the healthy diet prevent all forms of CVD while drinking and smoking are risk factors as atherosclerosis progresses patients are increasingly exhausted after physical exertion while severe cases cannot participate in everyday activities like walking uphill currently clinicians do not fully understand why CVD progresses faster in some patients than in others we know from studying tissue that unstable plaques have a thin fibrous cap over a large lipid core while stable plaques have thick fibrous caps that prevents premature rupture modern therapeutic options are available for patients with CBD to reduce the risk of plaque progression or rupture but how can we identify the patients who would benefit from such a treatment diseased arteries and plaques release molecules into the blood stream the SIS Vasc consortium set out to understand how CVD develops and to identify new targets for therapeutic intervention therefore the sis fast consortium used methods such as mass spectrometry to analyze large numbers of blood and tissue samples from patients at different stages of cardiovascular disease to uncover their molecular composition sis fast researchers have employed sophisticated methods to identify new biomarkers which correlate with the severity of vascular damage while this work is still ongoing substantial progress has already been made towards identifying molecular targets and a specialized cardiovascular disease knowledge base is available to support this research promising candidates are being tested for their impact on disease progression as we speak using the tell-tale molecules that we hope to find clinicians in the future will be able to identify patients with unstable plaques this would allow these patients to receive preventative therapy to interfere with the catastrophic and currently unpredictable events leading to stroke and heart attack you

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Keywords: blood, artery, heart, stroke, heart disease, atherosclerosis, cvd, coronary, herz, atherosklerose, kreislauf, heart failure, research, health, disease, plaque

Id: 8fuvtMiZfao

Length: 4min 38sec (278 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 30 2018