The Court of Justice of the European Union changes its case law on patentability of human embryonic stem cells.

On 18 December 2014, in International Stem Cell Corporation v. Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (C-364/13), the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered an important decision regarding the scope of the exclusion from patentability on morality-related grounds under Article 6(2) of the EU Biotech Directive. The Court made an important distinction between embryonic stem cell technologies based on fertilised human ovum and those based on unfertilised human ovum stimulated by parthenogenesis.

Cardiovascular variability is similarly altered in coronary patients with normal left ventricular function and in heart failure patients.

Objective: After myocardial infarction (MI), baroreflex function is impaired and heart rate (HR) variability is reduced. An impaired baroreflex has been observed also in coronary patients with no previous MI, leading to hypothesize alterations of HR variability also in these patients. The aim of the present work was, therefore, to study whether and to what extent cardiovascular variability is altered in coronary patients with no previous MI.