High blood pressure among children is on the rise and a lack of research about how to treat it has left pediatricians trying to make their best guess. That’s until researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) released results of a pioneering study that used a series of personalized trials to identify a preferred therapy for kids – the first step in tackling the problem.

The loss of a single gene two to three million years ago in our ancestors may have resulted in a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease in all humans as a species, according to new research. Loss of the gene may have also set up a further risk for red meat-eating humans. The findings were published July 22, 2019 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

A highly competitive $4.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) will support Keck School of Medicine of USC efforts to recruit patients from underrepresented populations into cardiac surgery clinical trials. The seven-year grant funds the Keck School’s ongoing research contributions to the Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network (CTSN), the formal NIH infrastructure for conducting major clinical trials in cardiac surgery. The grant also establishes an implementation science training program to address the critical need to develop methods to translate clinical research findings into clinical practice.