Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) is an inherited disorder of lipid metabolism characterized by premature cardiovascular disease. It is one of the most common metabolic disorders affecting humans. There are two clinical manifestations: the milder heterozygous form and more severe homozygous form. Despite posing a significant health risk, FH is inadequately diagnosed and managed. As the clinica...

AIM Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) is caused by mutations of FH genes, i.e. LDL-receptor (LDLR), PCSK9 and apolipoprotein B (ApoB) gene. We evaluated the usefulness of DNA analysis for the diagnosis of homozygous FH (homo-FH), and studied the frequency of FH in the Hokuriku district of Japan. METHODS Twenty-five homo-FH patients were recruited. LDLR mutations were identified using the Inv...

Greaney JL, Matthews EL, Wenner MM. Sympathetic reactivity in young women with a family history of hypertension. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 308: H816–H822, 2015. First published February 13, 2015; doi:10.1152/ajpheart.00867.2014.—Young adults with a family history of hypertension ( FH) have increased risk of developing hypertension. Furthermore, the blood pressure (BP) response to sympatho...

In this paper, we propose a new fast-frequencyhopping code-division multiple-access (FH-CDMA) scheme for wireless communication systems, in which Reed-Solomon (RS) codes are modulated on top of FH-CDMA for supporting higher data rate than conventional M -ary frequency-shiftkeying FH-CDMA (MFSK/FH-CDMA) scheme and our recently proposed prime/FH-CDMA scheme. The performance of the RS/FH-CDMA sche...

Mutations in fumarate hydratase (FH) on chromosome 1q43 cause a rare cancer syndrome, hereditary leiomyomatosis and renal cell cancer (HLRCC), but are rare in nonsyndromic and common uterine leiomyoma (UL) or fibroids. Studies suggested that variants in FH or in a linked gene may also predispose to UL. We re-sequenced 2.3 Mb of DNA spanning FH in 96 UL cases and controls from the multiethnic NI...

BACKGROUND Urinary (U)-complement components have been detected in patients with proteinuric renal diseases, and complement activation via the alternative pathway (AP) is believed to play a role in renal tubular damage. The present study aimed to examine the regulation of complement AP activation in patients with renal tubular damage by focusing on the balance between properdin (P) and factor H...

Complement factor H (fH) is a plasma protein that regulates activation of the alternative pathway, and mutations in fH are associated with a rare form of thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA), known as atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS). A more common TMA is thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, which is caused by the lack of normal ADAMTS-13-mediated cleavage of von Willebrand factor (VWF). W...

C-reactive protein (CRP) has been suggested to exert direct adverse effects on the vasculature in experimental setups, including endothelial dysfunction and proinflammatory changes. Here, we assessed the consequences of 1.25 mg/kg highly purified recombinant human CRP, administered as an intravenous bolus, in six patients with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) and six normocholesterolemic subj...

BACKGROUND Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) is an autosomal dominant disease that primarily results from mutations in the low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR) gene. We investigated two unrelated Chinese FH patients using gene screening and functional analysis to reveal the pathogenicity and the mechanism by which these mutations cause FH. METHODS First, the LDLR gene was sequenced in the...

Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) results in very high levels of atherogenic low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol from the time of birth. Mutations of the genes encoding for the LDL receptor, apolipoprotein B and proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9, are causes for this autosomal dominant inherited condition. Heterozygous FH is very common, while homozygous FH is rare. Affected i...