Fourteen fetal hearts from human fetuses between 10 and 18 weeks of gestational age (GA) were prospectively collected at the time of elective termination of pregnancy. RNA from recovered tissues was used for

transcriptome analysis with Affymetrix 1.0 ST microarray chip. From the amassed data we investigated differences in cardiac development within the 10-18 GA period dividing the sample by GA in three groups: 10-12 (H1), 13-15 (H2) and 16-18 APR-246 (H3) weeks. A fold change of 2 or above adjusted for a false discovery rate of 5% was used as initial cutoff to determine differential gene expression for individual genes. Test for enrichment to identify functional groups was carried out using the Gene Ontology (GO) and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG). Array analysis correctly identified the cardiac specific genes, and transcripts reported to be differentially expressed were confirmed by qRT-PCR. Single transcript and Ontology analysis showed first trimester heart expression

of myosin-related genes to be up-regulated bigger than 5-fold compared with second trimester heart. In contrast the second trimester hearts showed further gestation-related LY2090314 price increases in many genes involved in energy production and cardiac remodeling. In conclusion, fetal heart development during the first trimester was dominated by heart-specific genes coding for myocardial development and differentiation. During the second trimester, transcripts related to energy generation and cardiomyocyte communication for contractile coordination/proliferation

were more dominant. Transcripts related to fatty acid metabolism can be seen as early as 10 weeks and clearly increase as the heart matures. Retinol receptor and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptor transcripts were detected, and have not been described previously in human fetal heart during this period. For the first time global gene expression of heart has been described in human samples to create a database of normal development to understand and compare with known abnormal fetal heart development.”
“Background: In current literature the association between statin use and cataracts is inconsistent ACY-1215 supplier and controversial. We sought to further examine the effect of statin use on the risk of cataract and need for surgical intervention in 2 North American populations. Methods: This retrospective nested case-control study derived data from the British Columbia (BC) Ministry of Health databases from 2000-2007 and the IMS LifeLink database from 2001-2011 to form 2 patient cohorts. The BC cohort was comprised of female and male patients; 162,501 patients were matched with 650,004 control subjects. The IMS LifeLink cohort was comprised of male patients aged 40-85 years; 45,065 patients were matched with 450,650 control subjects. Patients with statin use for bigger than 1 year before the initial ophthalmology visit were identified. Diagnosis and surgical management of cataract were followed.