Vertebrate Cardiac Conduction System Illuminates New Therapies And Screens For Sudden Cardiac Death
May 15th, 2008 | by admin |
New conduction patterns have been identified in the vertebrate cardiacconduction system which may lead to novel therapies for sudden cardiacarrest, according to an article released on May 12, 2008 in theopen-access journal PLoS Biology, a part of thePublic Library of Science family of journals.
Cardiac arrhythmia, when there is irregular electrical activity of theheart muscle, can disrupt the regular contractions to the heart,resulting in loss of consciousness and death. In the United States,450,000 individuals die each year from this sudden cardiac death. Theonly proven preventive therapy for this event is the AutomaticImplantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (AICD) which is extremely costlyand puts a significant burden on the patient. Thus, further research isimportant to understand the cardiac conduction system, whose electricalimpulses control the rhythmic beating of the heart, so novel and safertherapeutic choices may be created.
By experimenting with zebrafish, a commonly used model organism formany human diseases, Didier Stainier and colleagues showed how acardiac-specific fluorescent calcium indicator in a transgenic line offish to examine the cardiac conduction system more closely. Using thisline, they observed four distinct physiologic cardiac conductionstates, which further respond to cellular and anatomic changes of theheart early in development. Additionally, they designed a newphysiologic-based forward genetic screen to identify mutants, whichmight have escaped identification using traditional detection methods.In conclusion, the authors are optimistic about the future developmentof new screening techniques and therapeutic options to help preventsudden cardiac death in other vertebrates, such as humans.
About the Public Library of Science
ThePublic Library of Science (PLoS) is a non-profit organization ofscientists and physicians committed to making the world’s scientificand medical literature a freely available public resource. For moreinformation, visit http://www.plos.org.
Genetic and physiologic dissection of the vertebrate cardiac conductionsystem.
Chi NC, Shaw RM, Jungblut B, Huisken J, Ferrer T, et al.
PLoS Biol 6(5): e109.
doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060109
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Written by Anna Sophia McKenney
Copyright: Medical News Today
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