In a study involving data from thousands of people, the risk of a new coronary heart disease diagnosis was statistically associated with bloodstream levels of nine specific molecules that are produced by gut microbes. Danxia Yu of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, U.S., and colleagues present these findings on March 17^th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine.

A team of scientists, including researchers from HSE University, has proposed a method for assessing stress resilience using physiological markers derived from wearable devices and saliva samples. The participants who adapted better to stress showed higher heart rate variability, higher zinc concentrations in saliva, and lower potassium levels.  The findings were published in the  Journal of Molecular Neuroscience.

Kyoto, Japan -- Pulmonary arterial hypertension, or PAH, is a rare and severe disease characterized by elevated blood pressure in the pulmonary arteries, which transport blood from the heart to the lungs. This can eventually lead to right heart failure, when the heart's right ventricle becomes too weak to pump sufficient blood through the lungs and to the rest of the body.

Current treatments for PAH have improved the outcome for patients, but the prognosis for this disease is still poor and some patients end up needing lung transplants. C-type natriuretic peptide, or CNP, is a hormone involved in the regulation of vascular function, and a team of researchers at Kyoto University and collaborating institutions wondered whether it might also have therapeutic potential in PAH.

"CNP has been studied mainly in cardiovascular biology, but we wondered whether it might also play an important protective role in pulmonary vascular disease," says first author Hiromu Yanagisawa. The role of this hormone and its receptor GC-B in the pulmonary vasculature and the development of PAH has remained unclear, so the team was motivated to investigate.