Scientists Discover a Bone-Deep Risk for Heart Disease - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/health/heart-disease-mutations-stem-cells.html
L’accumulation d’un clone de cellules souches hématopoïétiques mutées appelées « #CHIP » (pour « Clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential »), apparaît tôt ou tard avec l’âge et est un facteur de risque indépendant d’#athérosclérose.
CHIP [...] increases a person’s risk of dying within a decade, usually from a heart attack or stroke, by 40 or 50 percent.
The condition becomes more likely with age. Up to 20 percent of people in their 60s have it, and perhaps 50 percent of those in their 80s.
But how might mutated white blood cells cause heart disease? One clue intrigued scientists.
Artery-obstructing plaque is filled with white blood cells, smoldering with inflammation and subject to rupture. Perhaps mutated white cells were causing atherosclerosis or accelerating its development.
In separate studies, Dr. Ebert and Dr. Walsh gave mice a bone-marrow transplant containing stem cells with a CHIP mutation, along with stem cells that were not mutated. Mutated blood cells began proliferating in the mice, and they developed rapidly growing plaques that were burning with inflammation.
“For decades people have worked on #inflammation as a cause of atherosclerosis,” Dr. Ebert said. “But it was not clear what initiated the inflammation.”
Now there is a possible explanation — and, Dr. Ebert said, it raises the possibility that CHIP may be involved in other inflammatory diseases, like arthritis.