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The good news is heart failure in people with severe obesity may be reversible with common weight loss drugs. The bad news is both obesity, with BMIs of around 30, and severe obesity, with a BMI of 42 or greater, …

Increasing rates of obesity and severe obesity may presage increased rates of heart failure, Elizabeth Tracey reports Read more »

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GLP-1 receptor agonists are effective in helping most people lose weight, and now a new study suggests that in those with severe obesity, a BMI of 42 or greater and who have a type of heart failure, this condition may …

Is there another benefit besides weight loss of GLP-1s in people with severe obesity? Elizabeth Tracey reports Read more »

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There’s a relationship between severe obesity and one type of heart failure, and it looks like it’s mediated by adding more phosphate groups, a process known as phosphorylation, to proteins in heart muscle cells, specifically to units within the muscle …

Can GLP-1 agonists help in heart failure and severe obesity? Elizabeth Tracey reports Read more »

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Severe obesity may impede the ability of units inside heart muscle cells called sarcomeres to contract, and losing weight may reverse that condition. That’s according to research by cardiologist David Kass and colleagues at Johns Hopkins, who looked closely at …

What is severe obesity doing to the heart muscle’s ability to contract? Elizabeth Tracey reports Read more »

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Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, so-called HFpEF, is happening more frequently, especially in those with severe obesity. David Kass, a cardiologist and researcher at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues, have looked closely at heart muscle cells from this group of …

How is obesity related to a common form of heart failure? Elizabeth Tracey reports Read more »

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Brain organoids, collections of cells found in the brain, have been grown from blood samples of people with Alzheimer’s disease and used to assess the impact of a drug called escitalopram in a new study. Vasiliki Machairaki, study leader and …

A model of your brain may one day be grown in a lab, Elizabeth Tracey reports Read more »

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Extracellular vesicles are membrane bound packages cells use to jettison materials from inside the cell, a sort of trash can. Johns Hopkins genetic medicine expert Vasiliki Machairaki has shown in a new study that these vesicles may be a means …

What can be learned from what cells dispose of? Elizabeth Tracey reports Read more »