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The fatty acid propionate helps defend against the effects of high blood pressure, including atherosclerosis and heart tissue remodeling, a study on mice has found. Gut bacteria produce the substance – which calms the immune cells that drive up blood pressure – from natural dietary fiber.

Heart muscle cells fuse together during cardiac development and repair processes.

Common salt reduces the number of certain lactic acid bacteria in the gut of mice and humans according to a study published in Nature by Berlin’s Max Delbrück Center and Charité. This has an impact on immune cells which are partly responsible for autoimmune diseases and hypertension. Probiotics ameliorate the symptoms of disease in mice.

In the largest transcriptome study to date, an international research team analysed the RNA of transplanted hearts and discovered a number of new risk factors for dilated cardiomyopathy and other heart conditions which could thus be recognised more easily in future.

Prof. Holger Gerhardt of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) and an international team of collaborators receive a $6 million grant from the Fondation Leducq.

A new multinational study by researchers from Singapore, the UK and Germany has discovered that gene mutations in a protein called titin affect the heart function in healthy individuals. It was previously thought that the mutations affect only patients with dilated cardiomyopathy, one of the most common forms of inherited heart disease.

“One of the biggest questions in the biology of blood vessels is how cells regulate the size and...

Several research institutions in Berlin have jointly succeeded in attracting the angiogenesis specialist Dr. Holger Gerhardt to the capital city. Since the beginning of September he is research group leader at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) and at the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) and concurrently W3 Professor of Experimental Cardiovascular Research at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Furthermore, he is integrated into the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), a nation-wide research association.