Publications by authors named "Lahcen El Fertak"
Article Synopsis
- Metabolic syndrome involves issues like obesity, high blood pressure, and glucose intolerance, with oxidative stress playing a key role in these conditions.
- The study aimed to see if blocking the Nox4 enzyme could help improve blood pressure and metabolic issues in mice on a high-fat diet or receiving angiotensin II injections.
- Results showed that Nox4 inhibition had protective effects against blood pressure increases and reduced triglycerides in normal diet conditions, but it did not prevent heart damage or improve outcomes on a high-fat diet, especially worsening glucose tolerance in female mice.
Background: Mouse transgenesis has provided the unique opportunity to investigate mechanisms underlying sodium kidney reabsorption as well as end organ damage. However, understanding mouse background and the experimental conditions effects on phenotypic readouts of engineered mouse lines such as blood pressure presents a challenge. Despite the ability to generate high sodium and chloride plasma levels during high-salt diet, observed changes in blood pressure are not consistent between wild-type background strains and studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Left-ventricular hypertrophy and interstitial fibrosis are the main pathophysiological factors of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. Blockade of the serotonin 5-HT2B receptor (5-HT2BR) has been shown to reduce cardiac hypertrophy, oxidative stress, and extracellular cell matrix activation. In this study, we evaluated the effects of the 5-HT2BR blockade, on hemodynamic and cardiac remodeling, in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs) that display a diastolic dysfunction with preserved ejection fraction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe function of the majority of genes in the mouse and human genomes remains unknown. The mouse embryonic stem cell knockout resource provides a basis for the characterization of relationships between genes and phenotypes. The EUMODIC consortium developed and validated robust methodologies for the broad-based phenotyping of knockouts through a pipeline comprising 20 disease-oriented platforms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HF-PEF) is a condition that can cause lung problems and usually affects older people with high blood pressure or other risk factors.
- The researchers studied older rats with high blood pressure to see how their hearts were working using different tests like ECGs and blood pressure measurements.
- They found that these rats showed signs of heart problems like difficulty relaxing and changes in heart structure, but their heart's ability to pump blood remained okay, making them a good model for future heart medicine studies.
To identify the genes and pathways that underlie cardiovascular and metabolic phenotypes we performed an integrated analysis of a mouse C57BL/6JxA/J F2 (B6AF2) cross by relating genome-wide gene expression data from adipose, kidney, and liver tissues to physiological endpoints measured in the population. We have identified a large number of trait QTLs including loci driving variation in cardiac function on chromosomes 2 and 6 and a hotspot for adiposity, energy metabolism, and glucose traits on chromosome 8. Integration of adipose gene expression data identified a core set of genes that drive the chromosome 8 adiposity QTL.
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