Tag Archives: cardiovascular disease

Metallic nanoparticles inside heart tissue mitochondria can cause damage

With all the focus on COVID-19, viruses , and aerosols, it’s easy to forget that there are other kinds of contaminated air too. The last time I featured work on nanoparticles and air pollution was in a May 31, 2017 posting, “Explaining the link between air pollution and heart disease?” where scientists announced they may have discovered how air pollution (nanoparticles) were making their way from lungs to the heart. Answer: the bloodstream.

A July 3, 2020 Lancaster University press release (also on EurekAlert) announces research into how air made toxic by metallic nanoparticles affects the heart in very specific ways (Note: A link has been removed),

Toxic metallic air pollution nanoparticles are getting inside the crucial, energy-producing structures within the hearts of people living in polluted cities, causing cardiac stress – a new study confirms.
The research team, led by Professors Barbara Maher of Lancaster University and Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas of The University of Montana and the Universidad del Valle de Mexico, found the metallic nanoparticles, which included iron-rich nanoparticles and other pollution-derived metals such as titanium, inside the damaged heart cells of a 26-year-old and even a three-year-old toddler.
The hearts had belonged to people who had died in accidents and who had lived in highly-polluted Mexico City.
The findings shed new light on how air pollution can cause the development of heart disease, as the iron-rich particles were associated with damage to the cells, and increased cardiac oxidative stress, even in these very young hearts.
The repeated inhalation of these iron-rich nanoparticles, and their circulation by the bloodstream to the heart, may account for the well-established associations between exposure to particulate air pollution and increased cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks. The study indicates that heart disease can start in very early age, before progressing to full-blown cardiovascular illness later in life. This type of air pollution may thus be responsible for the ‘silent epidemic’ of heart disease, internationally. By causing pre-existing heart conditions, it may also account for some of the increased death rates from Covid-19 seen in areas with high levels of particulate air pollution.
Professor Maher said: “It’s been known for a long time that people with high exposure to particulate air pollution experience increased levels and severity of heart disease. Our new work shows that iron-rich nanoparticles from air pollution can get right inside the millions of mitochondria inside our hearts…the structures which generate the energy needed for our hearts to pump properly.
“That we found these metal particles inside the heart of even a three-year old indicates that we’re setting heart disease in train right from the earliest days, but only seeing its full, clinical effects in later life. It’s really urgent to reduce emissions of ultrafine particles from our vehicles and from industry, before we give heart disease to the next generation too.”
The researchers, using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray analysis, found that the mitochondria containing the iron-rich nanoparticles appeared to be damaged, with some cells showing deformities and others with ruptured membranes. Professor Calderón-Garcidueñas stated that increased levels of markers of cardiac oxidative stress are present in the very young cases examined.
The iron-rich nanoparticles found inside the heart cells are identical in size, shape and composition to those emitted from sources such as the exhausts, tyres and brakes of vehicles. These air pollution nanoparticles are also emitted by industrial sources as well as open fires in homes.
Some of the iron-rich nanoparticles are also strongly magnetic. This raises concerns about what might happen when people with millions of these nanoparticles in their hearts are using appliances with associated magnetic fields, such as hair dryers and mobile phones. People who work in industries that mean they are exposed to magnetic fields such as welders and power line engineers may also be at risk. This kind of exposure could potentially lead to heart electrical dysfunction and cell damage.
The findings builds on the researchers’ previous findings that show that the hearts of city dwellers contain billions of these nanoparticles and can be up to ten times more polluted than the hearts of people living in less polluted places.
The researchers say their study underlines the need for governments across the world to tackle ultrafine particulate pollution in their cities.
Professor Calderón-Garcidueñas said: “Exposure to such air pollution is a modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease, on a global scale, reinforcing the urgent need for individual and government actions not just to reduce PM2.5 but to monitor, regulate and reduce emissions of these specific, ultrafine components of the urban air pollution ‘cocktail’.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Iron-rich air pollution nanoparticles: An unrecognised environmental risk factor for myocardial mitochondrial dysfunction and cardiac oxidative stress by B.A.Maher, A.González-Maciel, R.Reynoso-Robles, R.Torres-Jardón, L.Calderón-Garcidueñas. Environmental Research Volume 188, September 2020, 109816 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2020.109816 Available online 21 June 2020

This paper appears to be open access (just keep scrolling down).

University of Waterloo (Canada) team combines wearable tech with artificial intelligence (AI) for health

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A May 16, 2018 University of Waterloo news release (also on EurekAlert) trumpets the research,

A team of Waterloo researchers found that applying artificial intelligence to the right combination of data retrieved from wearable technology may detect whether your health is failing.

The study, which involved researchers from Waterloo’s Faculties of Applied Health Sciences and Engineering, found that the data from wearable sensors and artificial intelligence that assesses changes in aerobic responses could one day predict whether a person is experiencing the onset of a respiratory or cardiovascular disease.

“The onset of a lot of chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, has a direct impact on our aerobic fitness,” said Thomas Beltrame, who led the research while at the University of Waterloo, and is now at the Institute of Computing in University of Campinas in Brazil. “In the near future, we believe it will be possible to continuously check your health, even before you realize that you need medical help.”

The study monitored active, healthy men in their twenties who wore a shirt for four days that incorporated sensors for heart rate, breathing and acceleration. They then compared the readings with laboratory responses and found that it was possible to accurately predict health-related benchmarks during daily activities using only the smart shirt.

“The research found a way to process biological signals and generate a meaningful single number to track fitness,” said Richard Hughson, co-author and kinesiology professor at the Schlegel-University of Waterloo Research Institute for Aging.

Beltrame and Hughson co-authored the study with Alexander Wong, Canada Research Chair in artificial intelligence and medical imaging and an engineering professor at Waterloo. He is affiliated with both the Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute and the Schlegel-University of Waterloo Research Institute for Aging. Robert Amelard, of the Schlegel-University of Waterloo Research Institute for Aging, is also a co-author. The study appears in the Journal of Applied Physiology.

“This multi-disciplinary research is a great example of how artificial intelligence can be a potential game-changer for healthcare by turning data into predictive knowledge to help healthcare professionals better understand an individual’s health,” said Wong. “It can have a significant impact on improving quality of life and well-being.”

Carré Technologies developed the smart shirts, called Hexoskin, used in the research.

The team plans to test these systems on mixed ages and genders, and people with health issues to see how people might wear the sensors to gauge whether their health is failing.

I wonder if this is the 2nd try for publicity about this work. Take a look at the publication date,

Extracting aerobic system dynamics during unsupervised activities of daily living using wearable sensor machine learning models by Thomas Beltrame, Robert Amelard, Alexander Wong, and Richard L. Hughson. Journal of Applied Physiology 124 (2)
Volume 124Issue 2February 2018Pages 473-48 https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00299.2017 [Published] 23 Feb 2018

This paper is behind a paywall.

Interested parties can find Carré Technologies here.

Explaining the link between air pollution and heart disease?

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An April 26, 2017 news item on Nanowerk announces research that may explain the link between heart disease and air pollution (Note: A link has been removed),

Tiny particles in air pollution have been associated with cardiovascular disease, which can lead to premature death. But how particles inhaled into the lungs can affect blood vessels and the heart has remained a mystery.

Now, scientists have found evidence in human and animal studies that inhaled nanoparticles can travel from the lungs into the bloodstream, potentially explaining the link between air pollution and cardiovascular disease. Their results appear in the journal ACS Nano (“Inhaled Nanoparticles Accumulate at Sites of Vascular Disease”).

An April 26, 2017 American Chemical Society news release on EurekAlert, which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

The World Health Organization estimates that in 2012, about 72 percent of premature deaths related to outdoor air pollution were due to ischemic heart disease and strokes. Pulmonary disease, respiratory infections and lung cancer were linked to the other 28 percent. Many scientists have suspected that fine particles travel from the lungs into the bloodstream, but evidence supporting this assumption in humans has been challenging to collect. So Mark Miller and colleagues at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom and the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands used a selection of specialized techniques to track the fate of inhaled gold nanoparticles.

In the new study, 14 healthy volunteers, 12 surgical patients and several mouse models inhaled gold nanoparticles, which have been safely used in medical imaging and drug delivery. Soon after exposure, the nanoparticles were detected in blood and urine. Importantly, the nanoparticles appeared to preferentially accumulate at inflamed vascular sites, including carotid plaques in patients at risk of a stroke. The findings suggest that nanoparticles can travel from the lungs into the bloodstream and reach susceptible areas of the cardiovascular system where they could possibly increase the likelihood of a heart attack or stroke, the researchers say.