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Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the most common of all genetic heart diseases and is the leading cause of sudden cardiac death. It is characterized by an abnormal thickening of the heart muscle, which over time can lead to cardiac dysfunction and, ultimately, heart failure.
A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and co-authored by Beth Pruitt, a UC Santa Barbara professor of mechanical engineering and the director of the campus's Institute for BioEngineering, describes the results of a complex long-term collaboration that included researchers at Stanford University, the University of Washington, and the University of Kentucky. The study has led to new understanding of how genetic mutations play out at the cellular level to cause HCM, and new perspectives on how to prevent it.