Medical Bulletin 20/October/2022

About one-fourth of recurrent estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancers lose ER expression, which renders them resistant to endocrine therapy and able to grow uncontrolled.

A team of researchers at Baylor College of Medicine has investigated how breast cancer cells lose their ER, and in the current study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they reveal a mechanism that not only explains the process but also offers possibilities to overcome it.

"For years, our goal has been to tease out the complex puzzle of breast cancer progression to understand how the players interact with each other to confer resistance to therapy and persistent growth," said corresponding author Dr. Weei-Chin Lin, professor of medicine - hematology and oncology and of molecular and cellular biology at Baylor. "Our goal is to overcome this hurdle to restore ER receptor expression in these cancers so they become susceptible to therapy again, giving patients a better chance for recovery."

Reference:

Dr. Weei-Chin Lin et al,14-3-3τ drives estrogen receptor loss via ERα36 induction and GATA3 inhibition in breast cancer,Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,DOI: 10.1073/pnas.220921111

Evaluation of sleep as a new 8th metric of cardiovascular health

Researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health evaluated an expanded measure of cardiovascular health (CVH) that includes sleep as an eighth metric, in relation to cardiovascular disease risk. This represents the first examination of adding sleep to the American Heart Association's original Life's Simple 7 (LS7) metrics as a novel eighth metric of CVH. The study is published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The study sample consisted of ~2000 middle-aged to older adults from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), an ongoing U.S. study of CVD and CVD risk factors, who participated in a sleep exam and provided comprehensive data on their sleep characteristics.

The research evaluated multiple expanded cardiovascular health scores --including the American Heart Association's Life's Simple 7 (LS7) metrics -- plus different sleep health measures, to evaluate which sleep parameters should be prioritized for CVD prevention. This study is the first to show that sleep metrics add independent predictive value for CVD events over and above the original 7 CVH metrics.

Reference:

Nour Makarem et al,Redefining Cardiovascular Health to Include Sleep: Prospective Associations with Cardiovascular Disease in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis,Journal of the American Heart Association

Hypertensive disorder of pregnancy linked to increased risk of death in offspring

A disorder that can trigger abnormally high blood pressure in pregnancy is associated with increased risks of death in offspring from birth to young adulthood, finds a study published by The BMJ.

The findings, based on data from over two million individuals in Denmark, show increased risks of death in offspring born to mothers with hypertensive disorder of pregnancy (HDP) - a group of conditions including pre-eclampsia, eclampsia, and hypertension that can lead to abnormally high blood pressure and other complications in pregnancy.

HDP affects up to 10% of pregnancies worldwide and is one of the leading causes of illness and death among mothers and their infants.

HDP has also been associated with several conditions in offspring in later life, such as metabolic syndrome (a combination of diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity), immune diseases, and neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. But evidence of HDP on long term mortality in offspring from birth to adolescence and beyond is lacking.

Reference:

Yongfu Yu et al,Maternal hypertensive disorder of pregnancy and mortality in offspring from birth to young adulthood: national population based cohort study,The BMJ, DOI 10.1136/bmj-2022-072157