Category Health/Medical

More than 122 million Americans—about half of the U.S. population ages 20 and older—have high blood pressure, referred to medically as hypertension. Hypertension is a major cause of cardiovascular disease, and despite advances in treatment, even patients who take medications to control their blood pressure remain at high risk of death from diseases like heart attack, heart failure, and stroke.

The lack of new drugs to effectively control hypertension and associated cardiovascular problems has fueled a search for novel treatment strategies, and now, researchers at the Lewis Katz Scho...

A molecule found in the venomous toadfish Thalassophryne nattereri has proven capable of controlling lung inflammation and could be the basis for a more effective asthma drug. The research was conducted by scientists at Butantan Institute in São Paulo, Brazil. An article describing the results is published in the journal Cells.

A welter of fish species live in freshwater, seawater, and a mixture of the two, and some of them are venomous. They have spines or stingers connected to venom glands, which are a kind of pouch full of molecules, large and small, that are toxins...

Have you ever wondered how drugs reach their targets and achieve their function within our bodies? If a drug molecule or a ligand is a message, an inbox is typically a receptor in the cell membrane. One such receptor involved in relaying molecular signals is a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR). About one-third of existing drugs work by controlling the activation of this protein. Japanese researchers now reveal a new way of activating GPCR by triggering shape changes in the intracellular region of the receptor. This new process can help researchers design drugs with fewer or no side effects.

If the cell membrane is like an Oreo cookie sandwich, GPCR is like a snake with seven segments traversing in and out of the...

Increased levels of lipoprotein(a), a variant of “bad cholesterol” in the bloodstream, are a risk factor for recurrent coronary heart disease (CHD) in people aged 60 or over, according to the results of a new study which tracked the issue over the course of 16 years.

The results, published today in Current Medical Research & Opinion, suggest that current cholesterol-lowering medications may not be effective at reducing the risk of recurrent CHD—such as a heart attack—due to elevated Lp(a).

“This finding adds to growing evidence of a relationship between increased Lp(a) and the risk of recurrent CHD,” says lead author Associate Professor Leon Simons, from the School of Clinical Medicine, at the Universi...