Short-term transdermal estradiol enhances nitric oxide synthase III and estrogen receptor mRNA expression in arteries of women with coronary artery disease.

Objective: To analyze the short-term effects of estradiol (E2) on the expression of nitric oxide synthase (NOS III) and estrogen receptors (ER) alpha and beta.

Methods: We studied 20 post-menopausal women with coronary artery disease (CAD) undergoing CABG surgery with left internal mammary artery (LIMA) grafting. Ten women received treatment with transdermal E2 prior to surgery (48-72 h) and 10 did not.

Malignant hypertrophic cardiomyopathy caused by the Arg723Gly mutation in beta-myosin heavy chain gene.

Mutations causing hypertrophic cardiomyopathy have been described in nine genes encoding sarcomeric proteins. We report a new mutation in three families, with a C-->G transversion in nucleotide 12 307 of the beta-myosin heavy chain gene, located at the essential light chain interacting region, resulting in the replacement of arginine by glycine at amino acid residue 723. PCR amplification of the selected regions followed by single strand conformation polymorphism analysis, DNA sequencing of the polymorphic patterns and restriction analysis were used to detect the mutation.