Inside Duke Medicine

SOM Research News: Better patient care, one discovery at a time

The latest research news from the School of Medicine.

Low-Carb Diet Effective at Lowering Blood Pressure

In a head-to-head comparison, two popular weight loss methods proved equally effective at helping participants lose significant amounts of weight. But, in a surprising twist, a low-carbohydrate diet proved better at lowering blood pressure than the weight-loss drug orlistat, according to Duke researchers.

The findings send an important message to hypertensive people trying to lose weight, says William S. Yancy, Jr., M.D., lead author of the study in the Jan. 25 Archives of Internal Medicine, and an associate professor of medicine at Duke. “If people have high blood pressure and a weight problem, a low-carbohydrate diet might be a better option than a weight loss medication.”

A DASH of Exercise and Weight Loss Improves Blood Pressure

Adding exercise and weight loss to the nationally recommended DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) reduced blood pressure equal to rates expected with use of medication alone, according to researchers at Duke University Medical Center.

“Not only were we surprised by the magnitude of the blood pressure reductions for people on the DASH diet who lost weight and exercised, but we found that they also improved other important cardiovascular biomarkers,” said James Blumenthal, Ph.D., a psychologist at Duke and lead author of the study. “Participants who just followed the DASH diet also improved, but not as much as those who also exercised and lost weight.”

Rare Genetic Variants Create ‘Synthetic’ Genome-Wide Signals of Disease Risk

Duke researcher David Goldstein, Ph.D., director of the IGSP Center for Human Genome Variation, and his team say they are now convinced that rare genetic variants – as opposed to more common ones – lie at the heart of the genetic component of most common diseases.

The finding, stemming from a series of simulation studies, challenges common interpretations of a multitude of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) that have identified thousands of single-DNA letter changes associated with greater risk of common diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. It may also hold important implications for understanding the underlying architecture of human disease.

Compounds That Help Protect Nerve Cells Discovered by Duke Team

Duke researchers have found some compounds that improve a cell's ability to properly "fold" proteins and could lead to promising drugs for degenerative nerve diseases, including Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Misfolded proteins in nerve cells (neurons) are a common factor in all of these diseases. The Duke team, led by Dennis J. Thiele, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology and cancer biology, has identified many new chemicals that activate a master regulator to increase the supply of "protein chaperone" molecules that help fold proteins properly. The study appeared in PLos Biology.

Treating prehypertension can stave off future health problems

A study by Madan Kwatra, M.D., professor of anesthesiology, stresses the importance of treating prehypertension, or blood pressures between 120/80 and 140/90. People with prehypertension are more at risk for cardiovascular disease, cognitive problems, diabetes and kidney disease. Lowering slightly elevated blood pressure lowers the potential for many of these health problems.