University of Bergen

Researchers have investigated the relation between 40-year-old women's pregnancy history and later risk of dying of cardiovascular diseases. Within each level of total number of pregnancies women had by age 40, mortality risk increased with increasing number of complicated pregnancies. Researchers from University of Bergen have investigated the relation between 40-year-old women's pregnancy history and later risk of dying of cardiovascular diseases. It is established that women with a complication of pregnancy are at about 2-fold increased risk of later cardiovascular disease. However, most previous studies have focused on individual complications and not full pregnancy histories. "Pregnancy history is a unique feature of women's health, readily available at no cost, and relevant to the most frequent cause of death facing women," says Associate Professor, Liv Grimstvedt Kvalvik at the Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care, University of Bergen, Norway She has, together with Researchers at National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, USA and colleagues at the University of Bergen, investigated the link between a woman's total pregnancy history at 40 years of age and her relative risk of dying from atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). The article is published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Five-time and even higher risk of dying of cardiovascular disease. The study combined several Norwegian registries covering the period 1967 to 2020. More than 800,000 women surviving to 40 years of age were identified. The main outcome was the time to ASVC mortality through age 69 years. The exposure was a woman's number of recorded pregnancies, from zero to four, and the number of those with complications, such as preterm delivery before 35 gestational weeks, preeclampsia (high blood pressure and protein in the urine), placental abruption (when the placenta separates from the uterus), perinatal death, and term or near-term birth weight less than 2700 grams. They found that pregnancy history at 40 years of age is strongly associated with ASCVD mortality: "Among women reaching 40 years of age, risk of ASCVD mortality through 69 years of age increased with the number of complicated pregnancies in a strong dose-response fashion," says Kvalvik. Within each level of total number of pregnancies women had by age 40, mortality risk increased with increasing number of complicated pregnancies. Women with more than one complicated pregnancy by 40 years of age can have an increased risk of 3-5-fold and even greater. In comparison, women with the lowest with 3 pregnancies without complications, had the lowest ASCVD mortality risk. Might benefit from interventions at an early age. "There is increasing scientific evidence supporting the associations between adverse pregnancy outcomes and later CVD, even as women with complications may be unaware of their increased CVD risk," says Kvalvik and adds: "Our findings support the potential use of complete pregnancy history to identify relatively young women who might benefit from interventions to reduce cardiovascular mortality and morbidity before other clinical indicators of CVD risk have fully emerged."

PORTO, Portugal, Feb. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- A team of researchers from Germany, the USA, the UK, and Norway won the third edition of the BIAL Award in Biomedicine, a 300,000 Euro prize promoted by the BIAL Foundation, which seeks to recognise a work in biomedicine of exceptional quality and scientific relevance published in the last ten years. Continue Reading Lead researchers of the winning team of the BIAL Award in Biomedicine 2023 promoted by the BIAL Foundation. Photo credits: Thomas Kuner - Hendrik Schröder, Heidelberg University Hospital; Frank Winkler - berlin-event-foto.de; Varun Venkataramani - Carina Kircher and Gerald Bendner. Led by researchers Varun Venkataramani (first author), Frank Winkler, and Thomas Kuner (senior co-authors) from the University of Heidelberg in Germany, the study "Glutamatergic synaptic input to glioma cells drives brain tumour progression", published in Nature in 2019, represents breakthrough research important for understanding human cancer, specifically glioblastomas, a very aggressive type of brain tumour with an average survival time of just 1.5 years, even with state-of-the-art treatment. In this work, the authors showed that glioblastomas and other incurable gliomas can integrate themselves into the function of the brain, and that input from healthy brain cells, normally used in functions such as thinking and memory, drives the progression of gliomas. This is possible by formation of synapses between neurons and cancer cells. For the president of the Jury, "these findings are a major and surprising advance in the understanding of how brain cancer progresses, by describing a new communication channel between neurons and the tumour and by suggesting specific avenues for treatment". This paper shows that cancer cells cannot merely proliferate - they have to hijack healthy biological processes and integrate themselves into the normal function of tissues. "Nowhere is this more blatant - and surprising - than in the brain tumours studied in this paper", says Ralph Adolphs. The award-winning research also provides a new explanation for why epilepsy and tumour progression are often observed together: epilepsy may be a cause, rather than a consequence of the tumour progression. The winning paper, chosen from 70 nominations, is co-authored by 29 researchers from Heidelberg University, Heidelberg University Hospital, German Cancer Research Center, University Hospital Mannheim, Otto-von-Guericke University (Germany), Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (USA), University of Glasgow (UK), University of Bergen, and Haukeland University Hospital (Norway). It should be noted that two of the scientists who won the 2021 edition of this Award, Katalin Karikó, and Drew Weissman, were awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries that enabled the development of vaccines based on mRNA to prevent COVID-19. Photo - Logo -

PORTO, Portugal, Feb. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- A team of researchers from Germany, the USA, the UK, and Norway won the third edition of the BIAL Award in Biomedicine, a 300,000 Euro prize promoted by the BIAL Foundation, which seeks to recognise a work in biomedicine of exceptional quality and scientific relevance published in the last ten years. Continue Reading Lead researchers of the winning team of the BIAL Award in Biomedicine 2023 promoted by the BIAL Foundation. Photo credits: Thomas Kuner - Hendrik Schröder, Heidelberg University Hospital; Frank Winkler - berlin-event-foto.de; Varun Venkataramani - Carina Kircher and Gerald Bendner. Led by researchers Varun Venkataramani (first author), Frank Winkler, and Thomas Kuner (senior co-authors) from the University of Heidelberg in Germany, the study "Glutamatergic synaptic input to glioma cells drives brain tumour progression", published in Nature in 2019, represents breakthrough research important for understanding human cancer, specifically glioblastomas, a very aggressive type of brain tumour with an average survival time of just 1.5 years, even with state-of-the-art treatment. In this work, the authors showed that glioblastomas and other incurable gliomas can integrate themselves into the function of the brain, and that input from healthy brain cells, normally used in functions such as thinking and memory, drives the progression of gliomas. This is possible by formation of synapses between neurons and cancer cells. For the president of the Jury, "these findings are a major and surprising advance in the understanding of how brain cancer progresses, by describing a new communication channel between neurons and the tumour and by suggesting specific avenues for treatment". This paper shows that cancer cells cannot merely proliferate - they have to hijack healthy biological processes and integrate themselves into the normal function of tissues. "Nowhere is this more blatant - and surprising - than in the brain tumours studied in this paper", says Ralph Adolphs. The award-winning research also provides a new explanation for why epilepsy and tumour progression are often observed together: epilepsy may be a cause, rather than a consequence of the tumour progression. The winning paper, chosen from 70 nominations, is co-authored by 29 researchers from Heidelberg University, Heidelberg University Hospital, German Cancer Research Center, University Hospital Mannheim, Otto-von-Guericke University (Germany), Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (USA), University of Glasgow (UK), University of Bergen, and Haukeland University Hospital (Norway). It should be noted that two of the scientists who won the 2021 edition of this Award, Katalin Karikó, and Drew Weissman, were awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries that enabled the development of vaccines based on mRNA to prevent COVID-19. Photo - Logo - SOURCE BIAL Foundation