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posted by on Tuesday January 24 2017, @05:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the this-is-why-billionaires-need-blood-transfusions dept.

A new study provides some of the first links between relatively common mutations in the blood cells of elderly humans and atherosclerosis.

Though cardiovascular disease, which is characterized in part by atherosclerosis, or plaque build-up, is a leading cause of death in the elderly, almost 60 percent of elderly patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD) exhibit no conventional risk factors, or just one. This and other data suggest that age-dependent risk factors that haven't yet been identified may contribute to CVD.

[...] In this study, researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) investigated whether there is a direct relationship between such [somatic DNA] mutations and atherosclerosis. They generated an experimental model to investigate how one of the genes commonly mutated in blood cells of elderly humans, TET2, affects plaque development. Plaque formation accelerated in the models transplanted with Tet2-deficient bone marrow cells, likely through increasing macrophage-driven inflammation in the artery wall. The results strengthen support for the hypothesis that hematopoietic mutations play a causal role in atherosclerosis.

Clonal hematopoiesis associated with Tet2 deficiency accelerates atherosclerosis development in mice. Science, 2017; eaag1381 DOI: 10.1126/science.aag1381


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @06:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @06:16PM (#458187)

    so the reported benefits of getting a transfusion with young blood might be supported here.

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  • (Score: 2) by BananaPhone on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:29PM

    by BananaPhone (2488) on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:29PM (#458221)

    Maybe when they clone beef and salmon they can clone blood before vampire-ism takes over.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @08:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @08:45PM (#458255)

    250 years ago, a common "treatment" for ailments by "doctors" was to open the victim's^W patient's vein and let him bleed ("remove some of the evil humors").

    In his final days (1799), George Washington's "doctor" bled him repeatedly.
    Maybe George would have died anyway, but weakening him by this method certainly didn't -help- things and may have been the cause of his death.

    So, even if the "bleed him" thing was a useful notion, it clearly was only HALF a good idea.
    The first successful human-human blood transfusion was in 1818. [redcrossblood.org]
    ...and they didn't actually know WTF they were doing until 1907.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]