Each day, hundreds of billions of cells in our body cycle through a period of growth and division. Yet in that time, only about 30 minutes is spent on the critical orchestration of mitosis, when chromosomes are carefully segregated from one parent cell to the next generation of two daughter cells.
It’s during this crucial period of cell division that things can go haywire. Chromosomes can be misdirected, leading to damaged and diseased cells that progress to different types of cancer. University of California San Diego scientists reporting in the journal Science have found a key mechanism that keeps track of mitosis timing and takes note when the process takes too long. Researchers with the labs of Professors Arshad Desai and Karen Oegema in the School of Biological Sciences and School of Medicine have, for the first time, described the details of the mitosis “stopwatch” and the ways that suspicious cells are detected and stopped from further proliferating.
“This work shows that cells carefully monitor the time taken to execute mitosis and use that as a filter to eliminate potentially problematic cells,” said Desai, a faculty member in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology. “If a cell takes longer than normal to complete mitosis, then daughter cells will know that their mother struggled to execute mitosis and they’ll stop dividing as a safety measure.”
The researchers discovered that the stopwatch is made up of a biochemical pathway that continually surveils the amount of time spent in mitosis. The pathway features a “memory” function that sums up mitosis delays from one generation to the next. Underlying the pathway is a complex of three proteins, including p53, encoded by the most commonly mutated gene in human cancers. Through a series of experiments, the researchers followed the pathway from parent to daughter and granddaughter cells over a 48-hour period. They found that the pathway works as a quality control mechanism that “remembers” mitotic time. Even cell divisions that are sequentially delayed by as little as 20 minutes are labeled as risky, they found.
The researchers believe the crucial 30 minutes of mitotic time could be evolution’s solution to quickly getting through a vital but potentially dangerous part of life when cells are vulnerable. Cancers, in Oegema’s view, are like an alien in our bodies that we are constantly fighting off using surveillance mechanisms like the stopwatch. Importantly, the researchers demonstrated that the stopwatch mechanism is switched “off” by many types of cancers, effectively allowing them to tolerate aberrant genomes that undergo longer and problematic mitoses.
“Our research suggests that measuring mitosis time is a mechanism that was developed as a way to protect us,” said Oegema, also a Cell and Developmental Biology Department professor. “Essentially, it’s another tumor-suppression function tied to p53’s job to protect against problematic cells.”
Looking ahead, the researchers noted in their Science study that their discovery could be used in future treatment strategies for cancer patients.
“Stopwatch status may influence the efficacy of therapeutic agents currently in use or being developed to target mitotic processes,” they note in the report, “and could serve as a potential biomarker for their use in cancer treatment.”
The coauthors of the paper are: Franz Meitinger, Hazrat Belal, Robert Davis, Mallory Martinez, Andrew Shiau, Karen Oegema and Arshad Desai.

A groundbreaking study published in the journal iScience presents crucial insights into the ocular effects of Zika virus infection during pregnancy and offers promising avenues for therapeutic intervention.
Produced by a team of researchers in the Department of Ophthalmology, Visual and Anatomical Sciences at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, the paper, “Targeting ABCG1 and SREBP-2 mediated cholesterol homeostasis ameliorates Zika virus-induced ocular pathology,” provides compelling evidence of the involvement of cholesterol metabolism in ZIKV-related eye abnormalities.
Zika virus, or ZIKV, has emerged as a public health threat and poses significant challenges to reproductive health worldwide. While congenital ZIKV infection has been shown to cause neurological disorders, primarily microcephaly — abnormal shrinking of the head circumference — several clinical studies have linked ZIKV to ocular deformities in infants. These include retinal lesions, microphthalmia, hemorrhagic retinopathy, retinal pigmented epithelium mottling, optic neuritis and hypoplasia of the optic nerve.
Despite the ZIKV infection causing severe neurological and ocular abnormalities in infants, no specific vaccines or antiviral treatments are available. In their research, the team conducted a transcriptomic analysis of ZIKV-infected retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells, revealing significant alterations in the cholesterol pathway.
“Our study aimed to uncover the molecular mechanisms underlying ZIKV-related eye abnormalities, with a focus on cellular metabolism,” said Ashok Kumar, Ph.D., professor of ophthalmology, visual and anatomical sciences, and senior author of the study. “By elucidating the roles of key players in cholesterol metabolism, we sought to identify potential targets for therapeutic intervention.”
The researchers investigated the functional roles of ATP-binding cassette transporter G1 (ABCG1) and sterol response element binding protein 2 (SREBP-2), two critical regulators of cholesterol metabolism, during ocular ZIKV infection. Their cell culture experiments demonstrated that increased ABCG1 activity, mediated via liver X receptors (LXRs), led to reduced ZIKV replication, while inhibition of SREBP-2 reduced viral replication by lowering cholesterol levels.
In vivo studies using mouse models of ZIKV-induced chorioretinal lesions revealed that treatment with an LXR agonist or SREBP-2 inhibitor mitigated ocular abnormalities associated with ZIKV infection. These treatments were accompanied by decreased expression of inflammatory mediators and increased activation of antiviral response genes.

“This study highlights the intricate interplay between cholesterol metabolism and ZIKV infection in the eye,” explained Sneha Singh, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Kumar’s lab. “Our findings suggest that targeting cholesterol pathway components, such as ABCG1 and SREBP-2, could offer promising therapeutic strategies for mitigating ZIKV-induced ocular complications.”
“The implications of our study extend beyond Zika virus, as the mechanisms uncovered can potentially apply to other enveloped viruses such as West Nile virus, Japanese encephalitis virus and Dengue virus,” Kumar said.
Kumar’s team is utilizing a lipidomics approach to pinpoint lipid molecules possessing both proviral and antiviral properties, with the overarching goal of unearthing novel antiviral therapeutics.
The publication of this paper underscores Wayne State’s commitment to advancing scientific knowledge and addressing pressing global health challenges. The interdisciplinary collaboration and innovative methodologies employed in this research exemplify the institution’s dedication to excellence in scientific inquiry.
“Through the innovative research team that Dr. Kumar has established, they are at the forefront of developing breakthroughs that will play a vital role in therapeutic interventions in eye abnormalities caused by the Zika virus,” said Ezemenari M. Obasi, Ph.D., vice president for research at Wayne State. “This study is an excellent example of how Wayne State’s research is making discoveries that can impact lives in Detroit and around the world.”
This research was made possible through funding from the National Institutes of Health’s National Eye Institute (Grants: R21AI135583, R01EY026964, 1R01EY032149-01 and R01 EY027381).

A stroke often impacts a person’s ability to move their lower body from the hips down to the feet.
This leads to diminished quality of life and mental health in addition to increased susceptibility to falls. But now, UBC Okanagan researchers are exploring new treatment methods to help bridge the service delivery gap, and recovery outcomes, for patients after a stroke.
“Shortened length of inpatient stays and continued challenges in transitioning back to the community — including poor access to continued stroke rehabilitation services — have resulted in substantial unmet recovery needs,” says Sarah Park, master’s student with the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management (CCDPM) based at UBC Okanagan. “This is especially true for lower extremity recovery. People can struggle to regain balance, stability and gait coordination for daily life activities and even proper ambulation.”
Dr. Brodie Sakakibara, CCDPM Investigator, recently led a national team of researchers, clinicians and people with lived experiences to evaluate the feasibility of a telerehabilitation program with aims to improve lower extremity recovery poststroke.
“More people are surviving a stroke and the need for accessible rehabilitation regardless of geographic location is increasingly important,” says Dr. Sakakibara. “This program harnesses technology, the expertise of clinical therapists and the motivation of individuals to improve stroke recovery.”
For the study, more than 32 participants, all who had experienced a stroke within the past 18 months, received eight telerehabilitation sessions via videoconference with a trained physical therapist. The research team focused their efforts on improving lower body mobility through standardized exercises combined with self-management supports.
“Overall, participants saw improvements in their mobility and strength, and made noticeable progress towards their rehabilitation goals,” says co-investigator Dr. Ada Tang, an Associate Professor with the School of Rehabilitation Sciences at McMaster University. “They also gained self-management skills to empower themselves and maintain their achievements moving forward.”
While many virtual rehabilitation programs developed out of necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic, programs like this have demonstrated feasibility and increased accessibility to patients. Especially those living in rural and remote areas.
However, researchers have noted therapeutic benefits are not maintained if additional therapy is not sustained after the end of a formal program, explains Park, who was also lead author of the study. It is important to incorporate self-management skills in post-stroke rehabilitation interventions, which empower participants to continue exercising and maintain those benefits after the program ends.
“Overall, self-management programs aim to improve health outcomes by helping people adapt to their circumstances through newfound skills, which could prevent or offset some of the difficulties individuals face when discharged from care,” Park explains. “Virtual rehabilitation programs, with a level of self-management, can ultimately enhance the continuum of care for patients transitioning back into the community and help improve their overall quality of life.”

Published25 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Aurelia FosterHealth reporter, BBC NewsWomen who feel severely low and irritable before their period are much more likely to suffer depression during pregnancy or within 12 months of giving birth, a study suggests.The study was based on the data of more than 900,000 women in Sweden.Those with severe premenstrual syndrome (PMS) or premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) were five times more likely to suffer perinatal depression.Those with perinatal depression were twice as likely to develop PMS or PMDD.The authors said more research was needed.’I had my womb removed at 22 because of PMDD’Prof Donghao Lu, from the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm, said: “Previous studies are focused on the association between premenstrual disorders and postnatal depression, because of the symptom appearance in tandem with hormone withdrawal. “However, we also showed an association between premenstrual disorders and antenatal depression, suggesting that there might be a subgroup of antenatal depression that is related to hormone changes as well.”At the preconception care, patients with premenstrual disorders should be informed about the risk of perinatal depression and potential prevention strategies.”Using 2001-18 birth records, the study, conducted jointly with the University of Iceland, compared women of similar ages, health and psychiatric history.Nearly 3% of those with perinatal depression had also had premenstrual disorders before pregnancy, compared with 0.6% of the others.PMS, causing low mood, depressive feeling, irritability and poor concentration, may affect up to 30% of women. PMDD, with similar but far more severe symptoms, 5-8%perinatal depression 10-20%The conditions can be treated with hormone drugs, anti-depressants or talking therapies.Liverpool Women’s Hospital reproductive-health consultant Dr Paula Briggs, who chairs the charity Women’s Health Concern, said they were linked and “we need more acknowledgement of that”.And she hopes the study, in the journal PLOS Medicine, will raise awareness, particularly among midwives and health visitors, so women can be better supported.”The PMDD some women have has perhaps not been taken as seriously as it should have been,” Dr Briggs said.”There’s no licensed treatment – but there are ways of managing these women to reduce the difficulties that the problem presents. “And I think suicide is a risk.”Mental health information and support is available.More on this storyPain, panic attacks and having my womb removed at 22Published16 JanuaryNature saved me after postnatal depression – GouldingPublished28 December 2023Naga Munchetty told to suck it up by NHS doctorsPublished18 October 2023Period-related condition causing extreme distressPublished2 August 2023Severe period symptoms ‘leading to hysterectomies’Published20 April 2023’Lack of postnatal help makes more kids too risky’Published9 May 2022“It’s like PMS but a hundred times worse”Published8 March 2018Related Internet LinksNHS EnglandKarolinska InstitutetUniversity of IcelandThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

New DNA sequencing technologies have identified the historical remains of George Washington’s grandnephews, Samuel Walter Washington and George Steptoe Washington Jr., and their mother, Lucy Payne Washington, from unmarked, fragmentary bones left at the Harewood family cemetery in Charles Town, West Virginia, in the mid-1800s.
In addition to enabling the remains in question to be reunited and reburied if desired, the researchers plan to apply the validated DNA analysis techniques to their ongoing efforts to identify the remains of service members lost around the world in past conflicts going back to World War II. The findings appear March 28 in the journal iScience.
“The ability to test historical samples such as the Harewood Cemetery remains allows us to evaluate and improve the methodologies applied to our casework samples that are of similar quality to historical remains, and often times even more degraded,” says first author Courtney Cavagnino of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System’s Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFMES-AFDIL) at the Dover Air Force Base.
“This particular case gave us an opportunity to test methods for extended kinship prediction that we developed using a set of known, degraded DNA samples needing identity confirmation,” says senior author Charla Marshall, Deputy Director of DoD DNA Operations. “Our laboratory is currently validating these novel methods to be used in routine casework.”
AFMES-AFDIL is the Department of Defense’s only human remains DNA laboratory, supporting current-day operations as well as the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s (DPAA) mission to identify service members from past conflicts extending back to World War II. In the new study, the AFMES-AFDIL team set out to identify remains from unmarked grave sites at Harewood Cemetery.
To confirm the suspected identities of the recovered remains, they performed a range of DNA tests of the remains together with analyses of the DNA from a living descendant, S.W. Washington. The methods included Y chromosome DNA analysis to assess paternal relationships, mitochondrial DNA sequencing to assess maternal relationships, and a newly developed method to analyze next generation sequencing (NGS) data including about 95,000 nuclear single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (places in the genome where there is a single-letter typo) to predict more distant ancestry.
Their pairwise kinship comparisons between the living descendant, S.W. Washington, and the three buried individuals predicted relationships one degree closer than anticipated, they note. While that was a surprise, they were able to figure out that was due to cross-cousin marriages in the Washington family tree.
“Our data confirmed the identities of the three sets of remains, and we furthermore resolved which male was the direct ancestor of S.W. Washington, the living descendant,” Marshall said.
The most common method used for DNA profiling in forensics is known as short tandem repeat (STR) analysis. But STR typing is often impossible to use with degraded remains, especially those preserved with post-war embalming techniques involving formaldehyde, Marshall says. Their newly developed methods now open the door to new ways of making a positive ID in these more difficult cases, including those involving service members lost in past conflicts whose remains contain only heavily degraded DNA.
“These SNP methods will provide us with a method of positive identification from nuclear DNA,” Marshall says. “Very importantly, these methods will allow us to expand our pool of viable family reference sample donors to 3rd and 4th degree relatives in an effort to increase the number of DNA-assisted identifications, particularly those of past conflicts such as World War II, Korea, Cold War, and Southeast Asia/Vietnam.”

Familial Alzheimer’s disease can be transferred via bone marrow transplant, researchers show March 28 in the journal Stem Cell Reports. When the team transplanted bone marrow stem cells from mice carrying a hereditary version of Alzheimer’s disease into normal lab mice, the recipients developed Alzheimer’s disease — and at an accelerated rate.
The study highlights the role of amyloid that originates outside of the brain in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, which changes the paradigm of Alzheimer’s from being a disease that is exclusively produced in the brain to a more systemic disease. Based on their findings, the researchers say that donors of blood, tissue, organ, and stem cells should be screened for Alzheimer’s disease to prevent its inadvertent transfer during blood product transfusions and cellular therapies.
“This supports the idea that Alzheimer’s is a systemic disease where amyloids that are expressed outside of the brain contribute to central nervous system pathology,” says senior author and immunologist Wilfred Jefferies, of the University of British Columbia. “As we continue to explore this mechanism, Alzheimer’s disease may be the tip of the iceberg and we need to have far better controls and screening of the donors used in blood, organ and tissue transplants as well as in the transfers of human derived stem cells or blood products.”
To test whether a peripheral source of amyloid could contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s in the brain, the researchers transplanted bone marrow containing stem cells from mice carrying a familial version of the disease — a variant of the human amyloid precursor protein (APP) gene, which, when cleaved, misfolded and aggregated, forms the amyloid plaques that are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. They performed transplants into two different strains of recipient mice: APP-knockout mice that lacked an APP gene altogether, and mice that carried a normal APP gene.
In this model of heritable Alzheimer’s disease, mice usually begin developing plaques at 9 to 10 months of age, and behavioral signs of cognitive decline begin to appear at 11 to 12 months of age. Surprisingly, the transplant recipients began showing symptoms of cognitive decline much earlier — at 6 months post-transplant for the APP-knockout mice and at 9 months for the “normal” mice.
“The fact that we could see significant behavioral differences and cognitive decline in the APP-knockouts at 6 months was surprising but also intriguing because it just showed the appearance of the disease that was being accelerated after being transferred,” says first author Chaahat Singh of the University of British Columbia.
In mice, signs of cognitive decline present as an absence of normal fear and a loss of short and long-term memory. Both groups of recipient mice also showed clear molecular and cellular hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, including leaky blood-brain barriers and buildup of amyloid in the brain.

Observing the transfer of disease in APP-knockout mice that lacked an APP gene altogether, the team concluded that the mutated gene in the donor cells can cause the disease and observing that recipient animals that carried a normal APP gene are susceptible to the disease suggests that the disease can be transferred to health individuals.
Because the transplanted stem cells were hematopoietic cells, meaning that they could develop into blood and immune cells but not neurons, the researchers’ demonstration of amyloid in the brains of APP knockout mice shows definitively that Alzheimer’s disease can result from amyloid that is produced outside of the central nervous system.
Finally the source of the disease in mice is a human APP gene demonstrating the mutated human gene can transfer the disease in a different species.
In future studies, the researchers plan to test whether transplanting tissues from normal mice to mice with familial Alzheimer’s could mitigate the disease and to test whether the disease is also transferable via other types of transplants or transfusions and to expand the investigation of the transfer of disease between species.
“In this study, we examined bone marrow and stem cells transplantation. However, next it will be important to examine if inadvertent transmission of disease takes place during the application of other forms of cellular therapies, as well as to directly examine the transfer of disease from contaminated sources, independent from cellular mechanisms,” says Jefferies.
This research was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the W. Garfield Weston Foundation/Weston Brain Institute, the Centre for Blood Research, the University of British Columbia, the Austrian Academy of Science, and the Sullivan Urology Foundation at Vancouver General Hospital.

Younger women are generally thought to have a low risk of heart disease, but new research urges clinicians to revisit that assumption, especially for women who suffer from certain mental health conditions. A new study being presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session found that having anxiety or depression could accelerate the development of cardiovascular risk factors among young and middle-aged women.
The study draws new attention to the importance of cardiovascular screening and preventive care as rates of cardiovascular risk factors rise and heart attacks become more common in younger people. Anxiety and depression have also become more prevalent in recent years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The researchers reported that younger women with anxiety or depression were nearly twice as likely to develop high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes over a 10-year period compared with women who did not have these mental health conditions, putting them nearly on par with men of the same age in terms of heart disease risk.
“We often feel that young women are the ‘safe group’ with regards to cardiovascular disease because the incidence of cardiovascular disease is quite low due to the protective effects of estrogen in this group,” said Giovanni Civieri, MD, cardiologist, research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, doctoral student at the University of Padua in Italy and the study’s lead author. “But this study suggests that if a younger woman has depression or anxiety, we should start screening for cardiovascular risk factors to reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease.”
The researchers analyzed health records of 71,214 people participating in the Mass General Brigham Biobank, a research program of the Mass General Brigham health system. People who had heart disease or who were diagnosed with anxiety or depression after the study began were excluded.
During the 10-year follow-up period, 38% of participants developed high blood pressure, high cholesterol and/or diabetes. According to the analysis, those with a history of anxiety or depression before the study period were about 55% more likely to develop one or more of these risk factors than people without anxiety or depression. This finding was most pronounced among women under the age of 50 with anxiety or depression, who were nearly twice as likely to develop cardiovascular risk factors compared with any other group.
In terms of absolute risk, young women overall showed the lowest rates of cardiovascular risk factors of any group, which was expected based on findings from previous studies and what is known about the protective effects of estrogen in pre-menopausal women. However, anxiety and depression were associated with a much higher relative risk among young women than was seen in other groups.

“Once a young woman has depression or anxiety, her absolute risk is comparable to a young male,” Civieri said. “There is a sort of a catch-up phenomenon where depression and anxiety increase the risk that would otherwise be very low.”
To study the potential drivers behind this relationship, the researchers examined the metabolic activity of stress-related brain regions in a subset of participants who had undergone brain scans. The results indicated that younger women with anxiety or depression showed relatively large increases in stress-related neural activity.
“The question is: Why are anxiety and depression associated with heightened gains in risk among younger females? This is something we are continuing to study,” Civieri said.
Although anxiety and depression are separate conditions, they were grouped together in the study because they are both associated with increased cardiovascular risk and they share common neurobiological pathways, meaning they are thought to affect health in similar ways.
It is unknown whether mental health treatments, such as antidepressant medications or psychotherapy, could help reduce cardiovascular risk, researchers said. However, once a person has high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes, Civieri said that well-established treatments such as statins and blood pressure-lowering drugs can effectively reduce the risk of serious cardiac events.

Whether you like your eggs sunny-side up, hard boiled or scrambled, many hesitate to eat them amid concerns that eggs may raise cholesterol levels and be bad for heart health. However, results from a prospective, controlled trial presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session show that over a four-month period cholesterol levels were similar among people who ate fortified eggs most days of the week compared with those who didn’t eat eggs.
A total of 140 patients with or at high risk for cardiovascular disease were enrolled in the PROSPERITY trial, which aimed to assess the effects of eating 12 or more fortified eggs a week versus a non-egg diet (consuming less than two eggs a week) on HDL- and LDL-cholesterol, as well as other key markers of cardiovascular health over a four-month study period.
“We know that cardiovascular disease is, to some extent, mediated through risk factors like high blood pressure, high cholesterol and increased BMI and diabetes. Dietary patterns and habits can have a notable influence on these and there’s been a lot of conflicting information about whether or not eggs are safe to eat, especially for people who have or are at risk for heart disease,” said Nina Nouhravesh, MD, a research fellow at the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina, and the study’s lead author. “This is a small study, but it gives us reassurance that eating fortified eggs is OK with regard to lipid effects over four months, even among a more high-risk population.”
Eggs are a common and relatively inexpensive source of protein and dietary cholesterol. Nouhravesh and her team wanted to look specifically at fortified eggs as they contain less saturated fat and additional vitamins and minerals, such as iodine, vitamin D, selenium, vitamin B2, 5 and 12, and omega-3 fatty acids.
For this study, patients were randomly assigned to eat 12 fortified eggs a week (cooked in whatever manner they chose) or to eat fewer than two eggs of any kind (fortified or not) per week. All patients were 50 years of age or older (the average age was 66 years), half were female and 27% were Black. All patients had experienced one prior cardiovascular event or had two cardiovascular risk factors, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, increased BMI or diabetes. The co-primary endpoint was LDL and HDL cholesterol at four months. Secondary endpoints included lipid, cardiometabolic and inflammatory biomarkers and levels of vitamin and minerals.
Patients had in-person clinic visits at the start of the study and visits at one and four months to take vital signs and have bloodwork done. Phone check-ins occurred at two and three months and patients in the fortified egg group were asked about their weekly egg consumption. Those with low adherence were provided additional education materials.
Results showed a -0.64 mg/dL and a -3.14 mg/dL reduction in HDL-cholesterol (“good” cholesterol) and LDL cholesterol (“bad” cholesterol), respectively, in the fortified egg group. While these differences weren’t statistically significant, the researchers said the differences suggest that eating 12 fortified eggs each week had no adverse effect on blood cholesterol. In terms of secondary endpoints, researchers observed a numerical reduction in total cholesterol, LDL particle number, another lipid biomarker called apoB, high-sensitivity troponin (a marker of heart damage), and insulin resistance scores in the fortified egg group, while vitamin B increased.

“While this is a neutral study, we did not observe adverse effects on biomarkers of cardiovascular health and there were signals of potential benefits of eating fortified eggs that warrant further investigation in larger studies as they are more hypothesis generating here,” Nouhravesh said, explaining that subgroup analyses revealed numerical increases in HDL cholesterol and reductions in LDL cholesterol in patients 65 years or older and those with diabetes in the fortified egg group compared with those eating fewer than two eggs.
So why have eggs gotten a bad rap? Some of the confusion stems from the fact that egg yolks contain cholesterol. Experts said a more important consideration, especially in the context of these findings, might be what people are eating alongside their eggs, such as buttered toast, bacon and other processed meats, which are not heart healthy choices. As always, Nouhravesh said it’s a good idea for people with heart disease to talk with their doctor about a heart healthy diet.
This single-center study is limited by its small size and reliance on patients’ self-reporting of their egg consumption and other dietary patterns. It was also an unblinded study, which means patients knew what study group they were in, which can influence their health behaviors.
The study was funded by Eggland’s Best.

Young to middle-aged women who reported drinking eight or more alcoholic beverages per week — more than one per day, on average — were significantly more likely to develop coronary heart disease compared with those who drank less, finds a study presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session. The risk was highest among both men and women who reported heavy episodic drinking, or “binge” drinking, and the link between alcohol and heart disease appears to be especially strong among women, according to the findings.
The study focused on 18- to 65-year-old adults and is among the largest and most diverse studies to date examining the links between alcohol and heart disease. Heart attacks and other forms of heart disease are on the rise in younger populations in the U.S., fueling concern about worsening health outcomes. At the same time, alcohol use and binge drinking have become more common among women than in previous decades.
“When it comes to binge drinking, both men and women with excess alcohol consumption had a higher risk of heart disease,” said Jamal Rana, MD, PhD, FACC, a cardiologist with The Permanente Medical Group, adjunct investigator in the Division of Research at Kaiser Permanente Northern California and the study’s lead author. “For women, we find consistently higher risk even without binge drinking. I wasn’t expecting these results among women in this lower age group because we usually see increased risk for heart disease among older women. It was definitely surprising.”
The researchers used data from more than 430,000 people who received care in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California integrated health organization, including nearly 243,000 men and 189,000 women. Participants on average were 44 years old and did not have heart disease at the start of the study. Information on participants’ alcohol intake was collected during primary care visits using the health organization’s standard “Alcohol as a Vital Sign” screening initiative, which includes visual reference posters to help patients estimate alcohol quantities according to standard measurements.
Researchers analyzed the relationship between the level of alcohol intake participants reported in routine assessments from 2014-2015 and coronary heart disease diagnoses during the four-year period that followed. Coronary heart disease occurs when the arteries that supply blood to the heart become narrowed, limiting blood flow. This condition can cause chest pain and acute events, such as a heart attack.
Based on self-report assessments, researchers categorized participants’ overall alcohol intake as low (one to two drinks per week for both men and women), moderate (three to 14 drinks per week for men and three to seven drinks per week for women), or high (15 or more drinks per week for men and eight or more drinks per week for women). They separately categorized each participant as either engaging in binge drinking or not. Binge drinking was defined as more than four drinks for men or more than three drinks for women in a single day in the past three months. People who reported no alcohol use were not included in the study. The researchers adjusted the data to account for age, physical activity, smoking and other known cardiovascular risk factors.
Overall, 3,108 study participants were diagnosed with coronary heart disease during the four-year follow-up period, and the incidence of coronary heart disease increased with higher levels of alcohol consumption. Among women, those who reported high alcohol intake had a 45% higher risk of heart disease compared with those reporting low intake and had a 29% higher risk compared with those reporting moderate intake. The difference was greatest among individuals in the binge drinking category; women in this category were 68% more likely to develop heart disease compared with women reporting moderate intake. Men with high overall intake were 33% more likely to develop heart disease compared with men who had moderate intake.

“Women feel they’re protected against heart disease until they’re older, but this study shows that even when you’re young or middle aged, if you are a heavy alcohol user or binge drink, you are at risk for coronary heart disease,” Rana said.
The results showed no significant difference in risk between people who reported moderate versus low alcohol intake, regardless of whether they also were categorized as binge drinking.
Alcohol has been shown to raise blood pressure and lead to metabolic changes that are associated with inflammation and obesity. Women also process alcohol differently than men. Researchers said the study calls attention to the health risks of alcohol consumption and underscores the importance of considering alcohol use in heart disease risk assessment and prevention efforts.
“When it comes to heart disease, the number one thing that comes to mind is smoking, and we do not think about alcohol as one of the vital signs,” Rana said. “I think a lot more awareness is needed, and alcohol should be part of routine health assessments moving forward.”
One limitation of the study is that people tend to under-report their alcohol intake when asked by a health care provider. As a result, the study likely provides conservative estimates of the heart disease risk associated with alcohol consumption. The researchers also said the manner in which alcohol screening is performed in a health clinic can influence how patients and clinicians discuss the risks of alcohol consumption, and that further research could help determine optimal strategies.
This study was funded by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Researchers have used Google Street View to study hundreds of elements of the built environment, including buildings, green spaces, pavements and roads, and how these elements relate to each other and influence coronary artery disease in people living in these neighbourhoods.
Their findings, published in the European Heart Journal  today (Thursday), show that these factors can predict 63% of the variation in the risk of coronary heart disease from one area to another.
Coronary heart disease, where a build-up of fatty substances in the coronary arteries interrupts the blood supply to the heart, is one of the most common forms of cardiovascular disease.
Researchers say that using Google Street View can help provide an overview of physical environmental risk factors in the built and natural environments that could help not only in understanding risk factors in these environments, but ultimately help towards building or adapting towns and cities to make them healthier places to live.
The study was led by Prof. Sadeer Al-Kindi and Prof. Sanjay Rajagopalan from University Hospitals Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute and Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, USA, and Dr. Zhuo Chen, a post-doctoral fellow in Prof. Rajagopalan’s laboratory.
Prof. Rajagopalan said: “We have always been interested in how the environment, both the built and natural environment, influences cardiovascular disease. Here in America, they say that the zip code is a better predictor of heart disease than even personal measures of health. However, to investigate how the environment influences large populations in multiple cities is no mean task. Hence, we used machine vision-based approaches to assess the links between the built environment and coronary heart disease prevalence in US cities.”
The study included more than half a million Google Street View images of Detroit, Michigan; Kansas City, Missouri; Cleveland, Ohio; Brownsville, Texas; Fremont, California; Bellevue, Washington State; and Denver, Colorado. Researchers also collected data on rates of coronary heart disease according to ‘census tracts’. These are areas smaller than a US zip code that are home to an average of 4,000 people. The researchers used an approach called a convolutional neural network; a type of artificial intelligence that can recognise and analyse patterns in images to make predictions.

The research revealed that features of the built environment visible on Google Street View images could predict 63% of the variation in coronary heart disease between these small regions of US cities.
Prof. Al-Kindi added: “We also used an approach called attention mapping, which highlights some of the important regions in the image, to provide a semi-qualitative interpretation of some of the thousands of features that may be important in coronary heart disease. For instance, features like green space and walkable roads were associated with lower risk, while other features, such as poorly paved roads, were associated with higher risk. However, these findings need further investigation.
“We’ve shown that we can use computer vision approaches to help identify environmental factors influencing cardiovascular risk and this could play a role in guiding heart-healthy urban planning. The fact that we can do this at scale is something that is absolutely unique and important for urban planning.”
“With upcoming challenges including climate change and a shifting demographic, where close to 70% of the world’s population will live in urban environments, there is a compelling need to understand urban environments at scale, using computer vision approaches that can provide exquisite detail at an unparalleled level,” said Prof. Rajagopalan.
In an accompanying editorial, [2] Dr. Rohan Khera from Yale University School of Medicine, USA said: “The association of residential location with outcomes often supersedes that of known biological risk factors. This is often summarised with the expression that a person’s postal code is a bigger determinant of their health than their genetic code. However, our ability to appropriately classify environmental risk factors has relied on population surveys that track wealth, pollution, and community resources.
“The study by Chen and colleagues presents a novel and more comprehensive evaluation of the built environment. This work creatively leverages Google’s panoramic street-view imagery that supplements its widely used map application.
“… an AI-enhanced approach to studying the physical environment and its association with cardiovascular health highlights that across our communities, measures of cardiovascular health are strongly encoded in merely the visual appearance of our neighbourhoods. It is critical to use this information wisely, both in defining strategic priorities for identifying vulnerable communities and in redoubling efforts to improve cardiovascular health in communities that need it most.”