Epigenetics of the Heart

Researchers are really closing in on the molecular factors behind heart failure, and this week brought two interesting bits of news in that area. In epigenetic research, the University of Cambridge’s Dr. Roger Foo and colleagues published what seems to be the very first epigenome-wide association study comparing normal hearts to failed hearts, finding among other things that in cells of failed hearts, there seems to be more CpG methylation in intragenic regions, while upregulated genes show lower CpG-island methylation. And just a week before, researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital Heart Center published results from the PROTECT study, which took a close look at whether it’s useful for doctors to use chaning levels of the protein NT-proBNP to guide … Continue reading →