Police seek suspects in deadly birthday party shooting
Lawmakers launch inquires into U.S. boat strike
Nov. 29, 2025, 10:07 PM EST / Updated Nov. 30, 2025,…
Mark Kelly says troops ‘can tell’ what orders…

Be that!

contact@bethat.ne.com

Menu ≡ ╳

Home
Travel
Culture
Lifestyle
Sport
Contact Us
Politics Politics

Be that!

Federal agents clash with Chicago protestors

admin - Latest News - November 9, 2025

admin

16 views 5 secs 0 Comments

Federal agents clash with Chicago protestors

Source link

TAGS:

PREVIOUS

Trump stands over man who fainted in 'SNL' skit

NEXT

Nov. 8, 2025, 9:56 AM ESTBy Erika EdwardsAltering a single gene may help people lower dangerously high levels of cholesterol and other fats in the blood, according to new research presented Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association in New Orleans.The Phase 1 clinical trial of 15 people was intended to show whether the experimental gene-editing therapy was safe to use in humans.It was, the researchers said. It was also effective: One infusion of the medicine drove down low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and triglycerides by about half — an effect that could decrease patients’ heart disease risk for the rest of their lives.“Frankly, if you’d asked me 15 years ago if we would be able to do this, I would have thought you were crazy,” said Dr. Steven Nissen, chief academic officer at the Cleveland Clinic’s Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute and one of the study’s investigators. “The results were pretty spectacular.”The experimental drug employs CRISPR, a gene-editing tool that makes cuts and changes to the body’s genetic code. In this case, it manipulates a single gene in the liver that normally boosts cholesterol levels. Unlike cholesterol-lowering drugs like statins that need to be taken daily, this approach is meant to work permanently after one dose. (CRISPR Therapeutics makes the drug and helped fund the study.)The research, which was also published Saturday in The New England Journal of Medicine, created a mix of excitement and concern among cardiologists.“It’s a good proof-of-principle study, meaning we know we can do it,” said Dr. Karol Watson, co-director of the Program of Preventive Cardiology at UCLA Health. “It doesn’t answer the question, ‘Should we do it?’”The CRISPR technique would be considered a lifelong change in a person’s genetic makeup. As such, its long-term safety is unknown. Ongoing studies will need to make certain that the therapy doesn’t cause harm to the liver, where its effects are primarily seen.“Here’s the thing,” Watson said. “We already have really safe, really good medications that lower LDL and triglycerides that are easy, once-daily oral medications. They will have to show us that CRISPR is very effective and safe. Long-term safety will be key.”According to Nissen, however, about half of people prescribed daily statins stop using them within a year, often because they have side effects. Moreover, the clinical trial only included patients who had tried, without success, to lower their cholesterol through standard approaches.Dr. Nishant Shah, a preventive cardiologist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, said the technology is far from being used in everyday practice “for good reason.”“These are long-lasting effects,” he said, “so we really need to make sure we understand safety before we can provide these therapies.”But if the drug is deemed to be safe, Shah said, “the future is very promising to be able to take care of patients at high risk for cardiovascular disease.”Heart disease is the No. 1 cause of death for Americans. The accumulation of fats in the blood including LDL cholesterol and triglycerides can clog arteries and lead to heart attack and stroke.About a quarter of U.S. adults, 25.5%, have dangerously high LDL levels of more than 130 mg/dL, according to the AHA. LDL levels below 100 mg/dL are considered healthy for most adults.The drug targets a gene called ANGPTL3, which tells the body to make a protein that prevents the liver from breaking down cholesterol. Some people have naturally low-functioning versions of this gene, resulting in lifelong reductions in LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels, according to the study. The drug is meant to mimic this effect, by turning off the gene so the liver is able to break down more cholesterol and fats.The 15 trial participants lived in Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. They were in their 50s and 60s. Thirteen were men. All had uncontrolled high LDL, triglycerides or a combination of the two.At the beginning of the trial, the median LDL cholesterol level was 155 mg/dL, and the median triglyceride level was 192 mg/dL, far above what’s considered healthy (below 150 mg/dL).Participants got different doses of the treatment, called CTX310, in a single infusion that lasted up to 4 ½ hours. A few people had side effects like nausea or back pain during the infusion. One volunteer had a temporary spike in liver enzymes that eventually returned to normal. And one person died for an unrelated reason months after the infusion, researchers said.The highest dose was given to four participants. In those people, LDL cholesterol decreased by 48.9%, and triglycerides fell by 55.2% within two months of treatment.“What’s nice about this target of ANGPTL3 is that it not only lowers the LDL, the bad cholesterol, but it also has some effectiveness on people who have very high triglycerides,” said Dr. Elizabeth McNally, a human geneticist and cardiologist at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.“This could be helpful, but it really does remain to be seen how this is better than existing therapies,” said McNally, who was not involved with the current research.This isn’t the first time an experimental gene therapy has proved successful at driving down cholesterol in early studies. Two studies presented at the AHA meeting in 2023 went after genes to lower cholesterol levels. Larger studies on those treatments are ongoing.CRISPR technology is relatively new, with excitement growing for the tool since it was first used in 2012. (Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 2020.) In 2023, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first CRISPR drug in the U.S., Casgevy, which treats sickle cell disease.Nissen said the next phase of clinical trials on the CTX310 treatment will include more patients, including people in the U.S. “We’ve got a ways to go, but this is the door to the future,” he said.Erika EdwardsErika Edwards is a health and medical news writer and reporter for NBC News and “TODAY.”Kaan Ozcan contributed.

Related Post

October 27, 2025

Oct. 27, 2025, 2:49 PM EDTBy Bridget BowmanRecent public polling in the New Jersey governor’s race has shown Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill leading Republican Jack Ciattarelli by varying degrees. Like many campaigns in the last decade, President Donald Trump and voter perceptions of his performance have loomed over this race.But Sherrill’s lead also appears to be tied to how voters in New Jersey view another politician: Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. Kornacki: Trump & Ciattarelli’s different paths to GOP gains in New Jersey03:36Polls conducted in recent weeks have not tested Murphy’s job approval rating, but a Fox News survey conducted Oct. 10-14 found 47% of voters had a favorable view of the two-term governor, while 49% had an unfavorable view of him. Sherrill led Ciattarelli in that survey by 5 points, within the poll’s margin of error. In the handful of public polls that did test Murphy’s job approval during the fall campaign, the three surveys that showed Murphy with an approval rating in the high 40s also saw Sherrill build bigger leads. In two surveys putting Murphy’s job approval at 35%, including one that was conducted for Ciattarelli’s campaign, the gubernatorial results showed a tied or near-tied race — the best results Ciattarelli has enjoyed in the whole campaign.The shift depending on Murphy’s approval rating underscores how views of the current two-term administration could be a key factor in the race.Ciattarelli has tied Sherrill to Murphy and cast himself as the candidate representing change in the race, placing blame for the state’s woes on Murphy and Democrats, who control the state Legislature. “Politicians like Mikie Sherrill and Phil Murphy just don’t get it,” Ciattarelli says in one recent TV ad. “They’re making New Jersey unaffordable, especially for the middle class. We need a change.” Sherrill, meanwhile, has also put some distance between herself and Murphy on the issue of the state’s rising electricity costs, while also casting herself as a candidate who will bring change to state government. “Make no mistake, I’ll also fight Trenton to bring down costs for families,” Sherrill said in a recent debate.Five recent publicly released surveys, all of them conducted in September, measured both Murphy’s standing and the governor’s race in New Jersey. A Fox News survey and a poll from the education group Yes Every Kid both found Sherrill up 7 points, with support from 48% of respondents, while a Quinnipiac survey from mid-September found Sherrill up 8 points, at 49%. Sherrill’s lead in the Fox News survey was outside the poll’s 3-point margin of error, while her leads in the other two surveys were just inside those margins of error. Murphy’s approval rating in those three polls: 47% or 48%.The outlier so far among independent surveys has been one from Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill, which showed the race tied, with both Sherrill and Ciattarelli at 43%, within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 points.Beyond the top-line results, a key difference separating the Emerson poll from others was Murphy’s approval rating, which that poll measured at 35%, more than 10 points lower than the other surveys.As polls show different pictures of Murphy’s approval rating, Trump’s approval rating has remained in the low 40s, with each of the September surveys finding Trump’s approval at 41%.Sherrill has tried to capitalize on that in her advertising, linking Trump to Ciattarelli, who has the president’s endorsement. Democrats are betting that voters’ opposition to Trump will drive them to the polls in November and boost Sherrill in the race. Ciattarelli, meanwhile, has largely praised the president while also brushing off Democratic attacks by arguing that Trump does not affect local issues like property taxes. Meanwhile, both candidates were asked in a recent debate to grade Murphy’s administration, and Sherrill gave the two-term governor a B.“There’s things like paying for the pensions, the nine increases in our credit rating that I like,” Sherrill said. “But overall I think there’s ways Trenton could do a lot better, being much more responsive to people. I’m going to have a culture shift in Trenton. I’m going to make sure we have more accountability in government, driving down costs for people,” Sherrill added, also calling for more action to address housing costs and rail infrastructure. Ciattarelli gave Murphy an F, calling Murphy’s tenure “the worst governorship of our lifetime.” “Take a look at what’s happened in New Jersey. We have an affordability crisis because of property taxes, electricity rate, housing and child care. We have a public education crisis because we watered down the public school curriculum. We have a public safety crisis because we don’t let our local police do their jobs. And we have an overdevelopment crisis in our suburban communities because of high-density housing. It’s been a failure across the board,” Ciattarelli said.Wherever Murphy’s approval rating is, his standing appears to be significantly better than former GOP Gov. Chris Christie’s after his two terms in office.A Fox News survey conducted in October 2017 found 21% of New Jersey voters viewed Christie favorably, while 77% viewed him unfavorably. The survey did not test Christie’s job approval. Bridget BowmanBridget Bowman is a national political reporter for NBC News.

October 31, 2025

Judge orders SNAP benefits to be paid

October 3, 2025

Karoline Leavitt talks about potential layoffs

October 2, 2025

What the early polls say about the shutdown

Comments are closed.

Home
Travel
Culture
Lifestyle
Sport
Contact Us
Politics

© Copyright 2025 - Be That ! . All Rights Reserved