Cardiovascular & Haematological Disorders - Drug Targets - Volume 14, Issue 2, 2014

In this issue of Cardiovascular & Hematological Disorders – Drug Targets, eight review articles are published with a common theme of Atherosclerosis, Heart Disease and Diabetes. The surge of metabolic syndromes in the past 2-3 decades, characterized by central obesity, hypertension, fasting hyperglycemia, and diabetic dyslipidemia, is associated with increasing incidence of heart diseases and vascular c Read More

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) represents a major health risk to the global population. In disease settings, cells that constitute the vasculature undergo profound changes both morphologically and functionally paralleling alterations in gene expression profile. At the transcriptional level, gene expression is steered by the epigenetic machinery including DNA methyltransferases, histone variants, non-coding regulatory RNAs, chr Read More

Cardiolipin is a major membrane phospholipid in the mitochondria and is essential for cellular energy metabolism mediated through mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation. Recent studies indicate that it plays a diverse role in cellular metabolism. Eukaryotic cardiolipin is synthesized de novo from phosphatidic acid via the cytidine-5’-diphosphate- 1,2-diacyl-sn-glycerol pathway and is deacylated to monolysocardiolipin in order Read More

Cardiac fibrosis is the pathological remodeling of the extracellular matrix (ECM) in response to stresses such as pressure overload or injury [1]. While initially adaptive, myocardial remodeling and subsequent fibrosis causes increased wall stiffness, arrhythmias, cardiac dysfunction, and eventually heart failure [2]. Though the disease processes and origins may differ, excess deposition of fibrillar collagens type I and III ch Read More

The earliest change that occurs in the diabetic heart is reduced glucose consumption, with a switch to utilization of fatty acids (FA) predominantly as an energy resource. Although this adaptation might be beneficial in the short-term, over a protracted duration, it is potentially catastrophic given the malicious effects produced by high FA in cardiomyocytes. In this review, we describe how the endothelial cell (EC), a “first-responder Read More

Insulin resistance and the metabolic syndrome are associated with fasting and postprandial dyslipidemia. This involves the hepatic and intestinal overproduction of very low density lipoproteins (VLDL) and chylomicron particles, respectively, which give rise to atherogenic remnants upon lipolysis in the circulation. Recently, the insulin secretagogue glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) has received attention not only as an anti-d Read More

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is accompanied by dysfunctional high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and this is characterized by alterations in its composition and structure compared with HDL from normal subjects (N-HDL). HDL from diabetic subjects (D-HDL) has a diminished endothelial protective capacity including reducted ability to exert antioxidative activity, stimulate endothelial cell (EC) production of nitric oxide (NO) Read More

Atherosclerosis is one major cause of cardiovascular diseases, the leading cause of death in industrialized countries. Reverse cholesterol transport (RCT) is thought to be one primary pathway to protect against atherosclerosis. The first and rate-limiting step of RCT is ATP-binding cassette transport A1 (ABCA1) and ABCG1-mediated cholesterol efflux from the cells. Recently, caveolin-1 (CAV1), a scaffolding protein that orga Read More

It has been reported that phospholipid transfer protein (PLTP) is an independent risk factor for human coronary artery disease. And metabolic tissues are important contributors to the systemic pools of PLTP protein. Consistently, PLTP mass and activity have been found to be elevated in the plasma of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and obese patients. In this review, we summarized the recent progresses made in the PLTP re Read More

Cardiovascular disease remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality in developed countries. New treatments, in the form of novel oral anticoagulants (NOAC) that reduce thrombotic risk are now available for patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) or acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Warfarin has been the cornerstone of thromboprophylaxis in patients with AF, but treatment is cumbersome, inconvenient and often unr Read More