Latest news with #congenitalheartdefects
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Community rallies in Peoria for 2025 Heart of Illinois Congenital Heart Defect Walk
PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — The 2025 Heart of Illinois Congenital Heart Defect Walk brought together families, friends, and supporters this weekend at the Peoria Riverfront. People in attendance shared one common goal: to raise awareness and funding for CHD, a life-threatening condition that affects thousands of children and adults across the country. Pam McMahon, co-chair of the event, emphasized the importance of coming together to support one another and raise awareness. 'We want everybody to come down, enjoy the interaction and the camaraderie with others, and just enjoy a day that is not in the hospital or in the clinic or worrying about what you're going through,' McMahon said. Held along the scenic Peoria Riverfront, the event attracted 28 teams who participated in the one-mile walk and collectively raised more than $40,000 to support CHD research and advocacy efforts. She added that the walk provides an important opportunity for connection. 'It gives families a chance to interact with other families that are going through the same thing that they are. We have a lot of our physicians and providers here today, and they get to see them outside of the office, so they get to interact on a more personal level,' she said. Before the walk kicked off, the riverfront was filled with energy and emotion as dozens gathered to take part in family-friendly activities and listen to heartfelt testimonies from families living with congenital heart defects. Many shared their personal stories of struggle, resilience and hope, creating a strong sense of community and purpose. Although the walk has ended, fundraising efforts continue. Donations will be accepted throughout the month of June to further support CHD research and patient support programs. For more information or to contribute, visit the Heart of Illinois Congenital Heart Walk's website. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Guardian
13-05-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Formation of heart in mouse embryo could provide way to treat birth defects
The moment a heart begins to form has been captured in extraordinary time-lapse images for the first time. The footage reveals cardiac cells in a mouse embryo begin to spontaneously organise themselves into a heart-like shape early in development. Scientists say the technique could provide new insights into congenital heart defects, which affect nearly one in 100 babies. 'This is the first time we've been able to watch heart cells this closely, for this long, during mammalian development,' said the senior author, Dr Kenzo Ivanovitch of University College London's Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. 'We first had to reliably grow the embryos in a dish over long periods, from a few hours to a few days, and what we found was totally unexpected.' The footage of the developing embryos was captured using a technique called advanced light-sheet microscopy. This allowed scientists to track the embryos as they went through a developmental milestone known as gastrulation, when the embryo begins to form distinct cell lines and starts to establish the basic axes of the body. Soon after, heart muscle cells organise themselves into a large tube that will go on to divide into sections that will eventually become the walls and chambers. In babies with heart defects, a hole can form during this process. Using fluorescent markers, the team tagged heart muscle cells called cardiomyocytes, causing them to glow in distinct colours. Snapshots were captured every two minutes over 40 hours, showing the cells moving, dividing and forming a primitive organ. This allowed the team to see when and where the first cells that make the heart appeared in the embryo. The researchers found that early during gastrulation (about six days into mouse embryo development), cells contributing solely to the heart emerged rapidly and behaved in highly organised ways. Rather than moving randomly, they began to follow distinct paths, whether contributing to the ventricles (the heart's pumping chambers) or the atria (where blood enters the heart from the body and lungs). 'Our findings demonstrate that cardiac fate determination and directional cell movement may be regulated much earlier in the embryo than current models suggest,' said Ivanovitch. 'This fundamentally changes our understanding of cardiac development by showing that what appears to be chaotic cell migration is actually governed by hidden patterns that ensure proper heart formation.' The team said the insights could advance the understanding and treatment of congenital heart defects and accelerate progress in growing heart tissue in the lab for use in regenerative medicine. The findings were published in The EMBO Journal.
