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Research Features
In the emerging world of personalized medicine, researchers are furiously looking for disease markers specific to minority populations, and already they have made some promising discoveries. The clues they are gathering, the scientists say, could lead to improved diagnosis and treatment of chronic diseases, such as asthma and heart disease, that di...
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Research Feature
For nearly 50 years Ken Wilkinson has dutifully committed time as a research volunteer to participate in all kinds of heart-related tests—blood pressure measurements, cholesterol screenings, heart rate checks, MRIs, EKGs. Like his wife’s mom once did and his own six children do now, the 77-year-old retired plumber volunteers for the Framingham Hear...
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Research Feature
Health experts are calling the recent release of new blood pressure guidelines a major step toward helping Americans reduce their risk of heart disease, the leading cause of U.S. deaths. Developed jointly by the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC), the guidelines now define hypertension as a systolic blood...
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Research Feature
Q1: What is the significance of the systolic number in a blood pressure reading? A: A blood pressure reading involves two numbers, one over the other. The top number is the systolic number and the bottom number is the diastolic number. For example, a reading might be presented as 120/80 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg). Systolic pressure , the top nu...
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Research Feature
OVERVIEW Purpose: The purpose of the study was to determine whether treating blood pressure to a target systolic pressure of less than 120 mm Hg is superior to treating to less than 140 mm Hg, which was the commonly recommended target at the time that the SPRINT trial was conducted . Background: High blood pressure is a major public health problem...
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Research Feature
Might lead to better understanding of sleep disorders, heart disease, and more If you feel energized or tired around the same time each day, or routinely get up early or stay up late—the familiar ‘early riser’ or ‘night owl’ syndrome—you are witnessing, in real time, your circadian rhythm at work. That’s the 24-hour internal body clock which contro...
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Research Feature
NHLBI K-12 grants will advance implementation science Every year, the outcomes of many millions of dollars in medical and health care research are, if not lost in translation, at least significantly delayed in getting into your doctor’s office. Some experts propose that discoveries can take as long as 17 years, on average, to enter routine clinical...
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Research Feature
A broken heart can’t fix itself—at least not yet. Consider what happens after a heart attack, when the cardiac muscle gets damaged. The heart does such a poor job at regenerating new muscle that scar tissue quickly develops in its place. The problem: that scar tissue doesn’t contract like normal tissue does, and the heart’s capacity to pump blood d...
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Research Feature
They ranged in age from 15 to 61—four African American women, all with stories to tell about their struggles with sickle cell disease, all with stories about a common experience that helped them through those struggles: participating in clinical trials. It mattered, said the women, all of whom had joined trials funded by the National Institutes of...
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Research Feature
The notion of altering a person’s genes to cure disease used to be the stuff of science fiction. But gene editing experiments aimed at the genetic disorder that causes sickle cell disease are now making their way from the laboratory to clinical trials. And researchers supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) are hoping tho...
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Research Feature
As the country struggles with the devastating opioid crisis, researchers say it could have dire consequences for one population with few pain-relieving alternatives: people living with sickle cell disease. The increasingly tight restrictions on opioid access, they say, is stirring fears that patients will face greater scrutiny than they already do...