A recent discovery by Southampton researchers about the regulating effects of arteries could help provide more effective treatments for an estimated 17.8 million patients suffering from cardiovascular disease around the world.
The team, led by Dr Graham Burdge, Reader in Human Nutrition, has found that polyunsaturated fats manufactured in the artery walls are converted into fat-like molecules, called eicosanoids, in order to make the arteries constrict. In a healthy person, the arteries are able to constrict and relax more easily than in someone who is at risk of developing high blood pressure or atherosclerosis. Graham and the team were able to reduce the constriction of arteries and, therefore, the risk of high blood pressure, by blocking the action of two enzymes that create polyunsaturated fats. The researchers also observed changes in the epigenetic ‘switches’ that control the key genes for making these fats.
“This is an important finding. Cardiovascular disease is an increasing public health issue,” says Graham. “In 2009, over 180,000 people died from cardiovascular disease in the UK – that is one in three of all deaths. Currently, it is difficult for doctors to screen people at risk of cardiovascular disease before symptoms develop. However, a test based on the epigenetic changes we have found could provide a new way of screening people for risk of cardiovascular disease, and, in time, it might also be possible to correct this epigenetic defect.”
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