{"id":475191,"date":"2026-02-12T13:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T13:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/475191\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T13:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T13:52:11","slug":"severe-influenza-may-trigger-heart-damage-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/475191\/","title":{"rendered":"Severe influenza may trigger heart damage: Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers believe they now understand how severe cases of influenza damage the heart, providing an explanation for the annual uptick in \u2060heart attacks<\/a> during flu season.<\/a><\/p>\n

“We have known for years \u2060that the frequency of heart attacks increases during flu season, yet outside of clinical intuition, scant evidence exists of the underlying mechanisms of that phenomenon,\u201d study leader Filip Swirski of \u200bthe Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai said in a \u200bstatement.<\/p>\n

Studying tissue \u2060samples from hospitalized patients who died of influenza, the researchers learned that a type of immune cell known as a pro-dendritic cell 3 becomes infected in the lungs and travels to the heart.<\/p>\n

There, instead of performing an immune cell’s usual job of clearing the virus, the pro-dendritic cell 3 produces large amounts of an inflammatory protein called type 1 interferon (IFN-1) that triggers the death of heart muscle cells, impairing cardiac output.<\/p>\n

“The pro-dendritic cell 3 acts as the \u2018Trojan horse\u2019 of the immune system during influenza infection, becoming infected in the lung, trafficking the virus to the heart, and disseminating it to cardiomyocytes,\u201d study co-author Jeffrey Downey, also from Mount Sinai, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Vaccination against the flu offers some \u2060protection \u2060against this type of heart damage, the researchers also reported in Immunity.<\/p>\n

Downey noted that in lab experiments, an mRNA drug that controls IFN-1 activity reduced the influenza-related heart muscle damage in test tubes and in mice and improved the muscles\u2019 pumping ability.<\/p>\n

The new findings “offer great promise for the development of new therapies, which are desperately needed since there are currently no viable clinical options to prevent cardiac damage\u201d from the flu, Swirski said.<\/p>\n

Uterus management<\/p>\n

In young women with cancer who need pelvic radiation, surgeons are preserving their ability to give birth in \u2060the future by temporarily moving the uterus out of the path of the high-energy radio waves, Swiss researchers report.<\/p>\n

Writing in Fertility and Sterility Reports, Dr. Daniela Huber and Dr. Deborah Wernly of Valais Hospital in Sion, Switzerland, describe the first such \u200bminimally invasive procedure in Europe to result in a live birth, in a woman who had been treated \u200bfor rectal cancer at age 28.<\/p>\n

So-called uterine and adnexal transposition for fertility preservation is done laparoscopically.<\/p>\n

The uterus and its appendages \u2013 the ovaries, fallopian tubes and nearby ligaments, collectively known as \u2060the adnexa \u2013 \u200care lifted to \u200ca region above the pelvis and stitched into place. After the cancer \u2060treatments are completed, the uterus is restored to its original \u200cposition.<\/p>\n

For years, surgeons have been moving the ovaries out of the way of radiotherapy, allowing women to preserve their eggs, \u200bbut the uterus remained vulnerable to irreparable \u2060damage.<\/p>\n

Uterine and adnexal transposition was pioneered by surgeons in Brazil and has \u2060also been tested by U.S. surgeons.<\/p>\n

Collectively, the cases done so far and the successful births that resulted “demonstrate \u2060that a re-implanted uterus \u200bcan sustain gestation to term, representing a significant advance for women requiring pelvic radiotherapy,\u201d Huber and Wernly concluded.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

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\n This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researchers believe they now understand how severe cases of influenza damage the heart, providing an explanation for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,144,137,1289,1623,145,337,2286],"class_list":{"0":"post-475191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-flu","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-heart-attack","13":"tag-immune-system","14":"tag-influenza","15":"tag-research","16":"tag-study"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}