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News Release
Researchers say they are closer to solving the mystery of how a good night’s sleep protects against heart disease. In studies using mice, they discovered a previously unknown mechanism between the brain, bone marrow, and blood vessels that appears to protect against the development of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries—but only when slee...
Credit: Transfusion journal
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Research Feature
Every two seconds someone in the United States needs blood. Five million people receive a blood transfusion every year in the U.S. In a country where blood is perennially in short supply, it is the most common medical procedure of all. Yet giving to a blood bank is not always a slam dunk—some people get turned away because of strict rules meant for...
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Research Feature
When the NHLBI announced the launch of the Cure Sickle Cell Initiative on September 13, many in the sickle cell disease community responded with enthusiasm. Patients, family members, and advocates took to social media and other channels to say they are ready to do their part, starting with spreading the news about the initiative to their neighbors,...
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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
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...