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The Texas Heart Institute (THI) and BiVACOR®, a clinical-stage medical device company, announced today the successful first-in-human implantation of the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart (TAH) as part of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Early Feasibility Study (EFS) on July 9, 2024.

BiVACOR’s TAH is a titanium-constructed biventricular rotary blood pump with a single moving part that utilizes a magnetically levitated rotor that pumps the blood and replaces both ventricles of a failing heart.

Gut health has been making headlines for years, but its impact on heart health is only now unfolding. A new study from Cleveland Clinic and Tufts University researchers has uncovered a link between gut bacteria and heart health that could revolutionize cardiovascular care for seniors. This groundbreaking research suggests that the key to a healthy heart in our later years might be influenced by the microscopic inhabitants of our digestive system.

The study, published in Circulation: Heart Failure, followed nearly 12,000 initially healthy participants for almost 16 years. Researchers focused on the gut microbe called trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), which is produced when gut bacteria digest certain nutrients found in red meat and other animal products. The researchers discovered that elevated levels of TMAO in the blood were strongly associated with a higher risk of developing heart failure, even after accounting for other known risk factors.

Stanley Hazen, MD, PhD, chair of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Sciences in Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute and the study’s senior author, emphasized the significance of these findings for predicting heart failure risk in seemingly healthy individuals. “Regular measurement of blood TMAO levels predicted incident risk for heart failure development during long-term follow-up,” he explained. This discovery opens new possibilities for early intervention and prevention strategies, particularly important for the elderly population who are at higher risk for heart-related issues.

Not in leading research but interesting.


According to a new study, a polyphenol-rich natural extract positively impacts lifespan, healthspan, and cellular senescence. These results were observed in both cell culture and a mouse model [1].

Traditional and folk medicines offer many botanical extracts that can be tested by modern science for their medicinal properties and influences on aging. One such plant is the Bolivian prawn sage (Salvia haenkei).

An ischemic stroke is a type of stroke that occurs when a blood clot in an artery, also known as thrombus, or the progressive narrowing of arteries, blocks the blood and oxygen flowing to the brain. This process can cause both temporary and permanent brain damage, for instance, leading to partial paralysis, cognitive impairments and other debilitating impairments.

Statistics suggest that older age increases the risk of experiencing ischemic strokes. While neuroscience studies have shed light on many of the physiological processes underpinning strokes, the immune responses following these events and promoting recovery remain poorly understood.

Researchers at the Institut Blood and Brain @ Caen-Normandie (BB@C), University of Edinburgh and other institutes in Europe carried out a study exploring how central nervous system (CNS)-associated macrophages (CAMs), immune cells residing at the CNS interfaces, contribute to post-stroke immune responses.

Scientists have sequenced the largest known animal genome — and it’s 30 times bigger than the human genome.

The genome belongs to the South American lungfish (Lepidosiren paradoxa), a primeval, air-breathing fish that “hops” onto land from the water using weird, limb-like fins. The fish’s DNA code expanded dramatically over the past 100 million years of evolutionary history, racking up the equivalent of one human genome every 10 million years, researchers found.

During the Cold War Era of the 1960s, Russian researchers were looking for ways to support the immune system in conditions running the gamut from cancer to bio-warfare agents. Eastern Europeans, with a cultural love of fermented milk products, logically looked to probiotics, or lactobacillus, for immune support because it was safe, cheap and effective.

A Bulgarian researcher and medical doctor, Dr. Ivan Bogdanov, researched lactobacillus bacteria in the 1960s. Bogdanov believed that specific strains of probiotics could have anti-tumor properties.

The doctor’s research team injected mice with a sarcoma cancer, then administered a crude mixture of cell fragments from a strain of Lactobacillus delbrukii. Bogdanov observed that the cancer disappeared within a few days. Subsequently, researchers attempted to re-grow cancer in the same mice, but without success — the mice seemed immune to the cancer cells.