Re: Low Magnesium Linked to Epidemic of Heart Disease?

From: LadyLollipop (LadyLollipop_at_insightbb.com)
Date: 03/13/05 

Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 07:32:00 GMT

"Robert" <RobertJ@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:v9adnYcg1Mq_fK7fRVn-2Q@got.net...
>
> "LadyLollipop" <LadyLollipop@insightbb.com> wrote in >
>
> Starting with a woman suffering from low levels of magnesium in her blood,
>> researchers found several family members with the same problem. They
> located
>> a previously unknown genetic mutation that linked family
>
> Serum or blood magnesium levels have never been the accepted criteria in
> establishing tissue storage magnesium levels.
> Magnesium like calcium is transported by binding proteins and those
> binding
> proteins may fluctuate and thus fluctuate the blood total calcium and
> magnesium levels unrelated to tissue calcium or magnesium levels. Ionized
> magnesium levels are closer to tissue levels but still disparate in
> clinical
> situations.

High blood pressure and cholesterol are very common problems, affecting a
quarter of the adult population, and their cause has been unknown, Richard
P. Lifton, lead researcher in the study, said in a telephone interview. His
findings were published online Thursday by the journal Science.

Multiple illnesses
Lifton, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, noted that high cholesterol
and blood pressure often occur together, and the newly found mutation
results in some people in this family with multiple illnesses, including
those.

Since not everyone with hypertension or high cholesterol has the mutation,
that raises the question of whether some other problem with the
mitochondria, such as loss of function with aging, is also a factor in those
diseases, he said.

"Epidemiological studies over the last twenty years have shown that
hypertension, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, low magnesium, diabetes,
insulin resistance and obesity tend to cluster with one another, but not in
a simple way," said Lifton, who works at Yale University.

"Not everybody who has any one of these traits has all of the others. The
pattern of inheritance is complicated, and there hasn't been a clear
understanding of what's driving this relationship," he said.

Mitochondrial defects may link diseases
The new report may indicate that mitochondrial function is what ties these
illnesses together.

Dr. Douglas S. Kerr said researchers have known that diabetes can be
associated with mitochondrial defects in families, and this study brings
together two other illnesses - high blood pressure and cholesterol - that,
when combined with diabetes, are known as metabolic syndrome.

The finding "is a piece of the puzzle that points to a better understanding
of the underlying mechanism. You have to collect many pieces of the puzzle,
but this is an important one," said Kerr, director of the Center for
Inherited Disorders of Energy Metabolism at Case Western Reserve University
in Cleveland.

The next goal, said Lifton, is to discover how mitochondrial defects cause
illnesses.

It could be loss of energy, he said, since the mitochondria produce the
body's
energy, or, with age, the mitochondria may stop working properly and begin
producing toxins.

David Samuels, a professor at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at
Virginia Tech, said that while the newly found mutation may be rare, "Our
experience has been that if one mitochondrial mutation causes a disease,
then other (mitochondrial DNA) mutations may also cause the same disease ...
This gives us reason to look for these metabolic diseases in families with
other mtDNA mutations," said Samuels, who was not part of the research team.

"Other things can cause these diseases as well, but this mitochondrial DNA
mutation is definitely one cause," he said.

New targets for treatment
Philip A. Wood, director of the genomics division at the University of
Alabama at Birmingham, said that while "this particular mitochondrial DNA
mutation is likely rare and possibly limited to this large family, what it
reveals is important."

"That is, this is a new mechanism involving mitochondrial dysfunction that
may help explain parts of disease processes that affect a large number of
people, but due to different underlying causes of mitochondrial dysfunction
such as aging," Wood said.

He added that "rare genetic variants, like this one, reveal new targets not
only for new drug development, but also may provide new approaches for
diagnosis using an underlying cause, in this case a mitochondrial DNA
mutation."

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute and the American Heart Association.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Low Magnesium Linked to Epidemic of Heart Disease?
    ... > Starting with a woman suffering from low levels of magnesium in her blood, ... and blood pressure often occur together, and the newly found mutation ... It could be loss of energy, he said, since the mitochondria produce the ...
    (sci.med.cardiology)
  • Re: Low Magnesium Linked to Epidemic of Heart Disease?
    ... >> is short on magnesium, and this is causing an epidemic of heart disease ... Gene mutation may link clusters of illnesses ... Study of family offers clues to cause of diseases ... The mutation affects the mitochondria, the power sources in each cell of the ...
    (sci.med.nutrition)
  • Re: Low Magnesium Linked to Epidemic of Heart Disease?
    ... >> is short on magnesium, and this is causing an epidemic of heart disease ... Gene mutation may link clusters of illnesses ... Study of family offers clues to cause of diseases ... The mutation affects the mitochondria, the power sources in each cell of the ...
    (sci.med.cardiology)
  • Re: Low Magnesium Linked to Epidemic of Heart Disease?
    ... Gene mutation may link clusters of illnesses ... Study of family offers clues to cause of diseases ... including high blood pressure and cholesterol ... The mutation affects the mitochondria, the power sources in each cell of the ...
    (sci.med.nutrition)
  • Re: Low Magnesium Linked to Epidemic of Heart Disease?
    ... Gene mutation may link clusters of illnesses ... Study of family offers clues to cause of diseases ... including high blood pressure and cholesterol ... The mutation affects the mitochondria, the power sources in each cell of the ...
    (sci.med.cardiology)