Cardioprotective effects of autophagy: Eat your heart out, heart failure!

Eat your heart out: Role of autophagy in myocardial ischemia/reperfusion.

Autophagy is an important process in the heart which is responsible for the normal turnover of long lived proteins and organelles. Inhibition of autophagy leads to the accumulation of protein aggregates and dysfunctional organelles which can cause cell death. Autophagy occurs at low basal levels under normal conditions in the heart, but is rapidly upregulated in response to stress such as nutri...

Endocarditis beyond the annulus: eat your heart out.

Endocarditis is on the rise. Between 15,000 to 20,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, exposing patients to a high risk of morbidity and mortality. The diagnosis, therapy and prognosis of endocarditis also seem to be moving targets, as new options for imaging and treatment come into clinical practice. Early precise diagnosis and identification of clinically significant complications is critic...

Epicardial adipose tissue and atherogenesis: EAT your heart out.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is increasingly recognized among HIV-infected patients, and carefully performed cohort studies show increased relative risk ratios of 1.5–2.0 [1,2]. Moreover, these studies suggest that traditional risk factors, while accounting for some degree of this increase in relative risk, do not account for all or even a major portion of the increased risk [1]. Insights into ...

Heart Failure Cardioprotective and Antiapoptotic Effects of Heme Oxygenase-1 in the Failing Heart

Cardioprotective Effect of Resveratrol in a Postinfarction Heart Failure Model

Despite great advances in therapies observed during the last decades, heart failure (HF) remained a major health problem in western countries. In order to further improve symptoms and survival in patients with heart failure, novel therapeutic strategies are needed. In some animal models of HF resveratrol (RES), it was able to prevent cardiac hypertrophy, contractile dysfunction, and remodeling....