suPAR tagged posts

The protein, suPAR, has been found to cause atherosclerosis and kidney disease. Investigators say it’s the first immune target to treat cardiovascular disease, which affects over 1 billion people worldwide. Researchers believe treatment could be developed within five years.

For the longest time, clinicians have treated cardiovascular disease by focusing on diabetes and blood pressure control, reducing cholesterol using medications like aspirin and statins.

Despite these measures, heart disease remains the number one cause of death in the United States, with many patients having heart attacks even after their risk factors are controlled, says Salim Hayek, M.D...

Kidney injury is a dreaded complication in patients hospitalized for COVID-19, with more than a third of patients ending up in need of dialysis. Patients with COVID-19-related kidney injury are also at much higher risk of death.

“We don’t known exactly why patients with severe COVID-19 have a high rate of kidney injury,” says Salim Hayek, M.D., a cardiologist at the Michigan Medicine (University of Michigan) Frankel Cardiovascular Center and senior author of a new observational study.” It is, however, becoming clearer that a hyperactive immune system plays a major role in the morbidity of COVID-19, including kidney-related complications.”

In the multi-center study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Hayek and an international team of experts report th...