As
Spring fast approaches (tomorrow), we all realise that the end of the year is
near. Hopefully the studies and trials are all going to plan and I know
everyone is eagerly awaiting the opening of the abstract submissions (very
shortly) for the HBPRCA annual Scientific meeting. This year will be one not to
be missed, especially for STUDENTS as there is the fantastic prospect of
winning a trip to the United Kingdom to present at the British Hypertension
Society (See Kate’s section). To celebrate these new links, we feature an
article on the British Hypertension Society. In addition, we highlight the work of Professor A F
Dominiczak from
Glasgow, who is an active member of the BHS and who has been invited to be the RD Wright Lecturer for 2005 at this year’s ASM (see
feature article). Many of you may be surprised by
our magnanimous nature in face of our disastrous Ashes tour (Cricket).
Happy
reading.
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE from Stephen Harrap
The
Annual Scientific Meeting is drawing nearer and shortly you will be receiving
all the information for registration and abstract submission. This will be a
very special meeting for us all and one that we hope will provide both stimulus
and opportunity for the Council to grow stronger. If you have not been to the
ASM for a year or two, now is the perfect time to renew your involvement and
catch up with old and new colleagues and friends. We would also be grateful for
your help by encouraging others to participate and hopefully join the Council.
This is especially true for students, for whom there are significant advantages
in joining our ranks.
High Blood Pressure Research Council 27th Annual
Scientific Meeting
Wednesday
7th December 2005 for the Clinical Workshop starting at 4:30 pm.
Thursday-Friday
8-9th December for the Main Scientific meeting Bio21, 30 Flemington Road,
Carlton Victoria 3053 Australia.
MEMBERSHIP NEWS from Doug
McKitrick
Do your graduate students know that they can have free membership in the
HBPRCA? Do your post-docs know of the networking opportunities and broader
scientific community involvement that come with HBPRCA membership? Do you have
a colleague that contributes to hypertension research, treatment or education
that would benefit from HBPRCA membership, and have you talked to them about
it? Have you renewed your membership in Australia’s premier society for
hypertension-related research and information? If it’s all ‘YES’ jump ahead to
the next section and read on. If its some ‘NO’s or ‘DON’T KNOW’s please take a
few minutes and make a plan. Feel free to contact us for advice.
If
you have specific comments or concerns with your membership, or issues relating
to membership generally, accept the invitation to communicate them directly to
the Membership Secretary, Dr Doug McKitrick, via contact details available on
the HBPRCA website.
SOCIETY NEWS from Kate Denton
Great
news regarding our plans to establish closer links with the British
Hypertension Society. The proposal put forward, was that the top student (as
judged each year on the basis of abstract and oral presentation) from each society
would be supported to attend the reciprocal society’s next annual meeting and
present their work. The student would be expected to visit a number of
laboratories in the UK and to establish relationships that we hope would
flourish over time BHS has taken up this proposal with enthusiasm and are
prepared to send their student prize winner to our meeting in December this
year. Therefore our student would attend the BHS meeting in September 2006.
All members should encourage their students to become members of the society
and submitted abstracts to this years meeting. This award will be advertised in
detail in the forthcoming call for abstracts for the HBPRCA 2006 meeting. We
hope to see many student submissions this year, to take advantage of this opportunity
to enhance their international research profile.
The British
Hypertension Society
The
British
Hypertension Society (BHS) is a society much like our own with over 230
members formed with the aim to promote the advancement of knowledge and
dissemination of information concerning the pathophysiology, epidemiology,
detection, investigation and treatment of arterial hypertension and related
vascular diseases with in the United Kingdom. They provide a medical and
scientific research forum to enable sharing of cutting edge research in order
to understand the origin of high blood pressure and improve its
treatment.
The BHS formed in the early 1980’s has a strong track record
of producing internationally renowned guidelines for the management of
hypertension which are widely adopted in primary care in the UK and
elsewhere. As part of our increasing engagement in improving blood
pressure measurement they are now undertaking active validation of new blood
pressure devices for the measurement of blood pressure. The Society has
also established an educational programme to support scientists, doctors and
other healthcare workers involved in understanding the basis of high blood
pressure and improving its treatment throughout the UK. The BHS has a number of initiatives which
are organised by Working Parties who report to the Executive Committee. The BHS Information Service and
Guidelines Working Party
(Chair: Professor Bryan Williams) provides information for health care
professionals about hypertension (BP Measurement CD-ROM and Posters, Nurse
Distance Learning Packs, ABCD Algorithm Posters, BHS Cardiovascular Medicine
Research Net, Shared Care Card, Factfiles). The BHS
Educational Programmes Working Party (Chair: Professor Mark Caulfield) develops and implement BHS Live!
Events, supervises the organisation of UK Specialist Accreditation, BHS Primary
Care Meetings and Masterclasses. The BHS
BP Monitoring Working Party
(Chair: Professor John Potter) advises on the validation of blood pressure
monitors and is responsible for issues relating to mercury.
The Annual
Scientific meeting of the British Hypertension Society.
One of their main activities is there an annual scientific
meeting which is held every September at a University Campus in the UK and
Ireland. This year the ANNUAL
SCIENTIFIC MEETING will be at historic Queens’
College, Cambridge on Monday 19th September until Wednesday 21st September 2005. The meeting secretary is Mrs Gerry McCarthy (Hampton Medical
Conferences Ltd, gmccarthy@hamptonmedical.com).
The SIR GEORGE PICKERING LECTURE will be given
by past president Professor Graham MacGregor (London) “Salt – Neptune’s
Gift?” Professor Macgregor as chairman
of the “Group Consensus Action on Salt and Health” has been leading a strong public campaign to reduce the salt
content of British foods.
Other
highlights of the meeting will be a session on ASCOT (Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac
Outcomes Trial) entitled “Are there Implications for the BHS/NICE Treatment
Algorithms?”
Photo Left: Old Hall, Cambridge, built in
1449.
The British
Hypertension Society Executive
The BHS current president is Professor Neil R. Poulter (photo left) who
is the Professor Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine at Imperial College School
of Medicine National Heart and Lung Institute, London. (email n.poulter@ic.ac.uk ).
The BHS Vice-President is Professor Morris J. Brown (photo left) who
is a principal investigator at the Clinical Pharmacology Unit, a division of the Department of Medicine in
the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, mjb14@medschl.cam.ac.uk).
The
BHS Secretary is Professor Alun D. Hughes, Professor of Clinical
Pharmacology (Imperial College, a.hughes@imperial.ac.uk).
Past
presidents include Dr. J. Robertson, Dr. J. Ledingham, Professor John
Reid, Professor Peter Sever, Professor A. Lever , Professor Peter Sleight ,
Professor D.G. Beevers , Professor L.E. Ramsay, Professor Graham MacGregor and Professor B. Williams.
August Feature
Article Part 2 : RD Wright Lecturer for 2005
Professor A F
Dominiczak
Professor A F
Dominiczak MD FRCP FmedSci, from the UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, Western Infirmary holds a
British Heart Foundation Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine. Anna graduated in Medicine at the Medical School
of Gdansk, Poland in 1978 and currently heads the BHF Blood Pressure Group at
the University of Glasgow. She is also a Consultant Physician and
Endocrinologist at the Western Infirmary and Associate Dean for Research at the
Faculty of Medicine. She has a major research interest in cardiovascular
genetics and vascular biology; and holds a BHF Programme Grant “Genetic
determinants of hypertension and its vascular complication: from positional
candidate genes to vascular gene transfer strategies”
Her Research
interests fall into 3 main areas
Molecular
genetic strategies in cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease. Designed to unravel the susceptibility and severity genes
for blood pressure regulation, left ventricular hypertrophy and the sensitivity
to cerebrovascular ischaemia in a stroke prone spontaneously hypertensive
model. She l uses quantitative trait loci identified in experimental studies to
guide the genetic analysis of human cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease.
Endothelial function in
vessels. These
studies focus on a hypothesis that one of the major modifiable determinants of
endothelial dysfunction is an imbalance between the nitric oxide and the
superoxide anion. Her team has demonstrated that the nitric oxide-dependent
endothelial dysfunction in vessels is due to excess of superoxide anion
generated by the endothelium. These studies are currently being translated from
bench to bedside with the use of a non-invasive vascular ultrasound technique.
Vascular
gene transfer strategies. Targeted
gene transfer strategies have been designed to restore the nitric
oxide/superoxide balance in the HRSP in vivo and in human saphenous veins ex
vivo. Her group have developed viral vectors based on recombinant adenoviruses
encoding bovine and human endothelial nitric oxide synthase genes and
demonstrated high levels of foreign gene expression associated with a
significant improvement of endothelial nitric oxide bioavailability in
functional studies. Further work in this area will address similar strategies
in human vessels as well as new viral vectors and new cDNA constructs to
address more thoroughly the issue of local molecular therapeutic strategies.
She
has published over 160 publications including these recently:
1. Carswell HV, McBride
MW, Graham D, Dominiczak AF, Macrae IM. Mutant animal models of stroke and gene
expression: the stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rat. Methods Mol
Med. 2005;104:49-74.
2. Tomaszewski M,
Charchar FJ, Zukowska-Szczechowska E, Grzeszczak W, Dominiczak AF. Letter re: Inflammation and lipoprotein changes with
protracted exercise. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2005;90:4981.
3. Miller WH, Brosnan
MJ, Graham D, Nicol CG, Morecroft I, Channon KM, Danilov SM, Reynolds PN, Baker
AH, Dominiczak AF. Targeting endothelial cells with adenovirus
expressing nitric oxide synthase prevents elevation of blood pressure in
stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats. Mol Ther. 2005;12:321-7.
4. Graham D, McBride MW,
Brain NJ, Dominiczak AF. Congenic/consomic models of hypertension. Methods
Mol Med. 2005;108:3-15.
5. Nemoto K, Sekimoto M,
Fukamachi K, Kageyama H, Degawa M, Hamadai M, Hendley ED, Macrae IM, Clark JS, Dominiczak AF, Ueyama T. No involvement of the nerve growth factor
gene locus in hypertension in spontaneously hypertensive rats. Hypertens
Res. 2005;28:155-63.
6. Brain N, Jr., Dominiczak AF. Pharmacogenomics in hypertension: present
practicalities and future potential. J Hypertens. 2005;23:1327-9.
7. Carswell HV, Dominiczak AF, Garcia-Segura LM, Harada N, Hutchison JB, Macrae IM.
Brain aromatase expression after experimental stroke: Topography and time
course. J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol. 2005;96:89-91.
8. Newhouse SJ, Wallace
C, Dobson R, Mein C, Pembroke J, Farrall M, Clayton D, Brown M, Samani N, Dominiczak
A, Connell JM, Webster J,
Lathrop GM, Caulfield M, Munroe PB. Haplotypes of the WNK1 gene associate with
blood pressure variation in a severely hypertensive population from the British
Genetics of Hypertension study. Hum Mol Genet. 2005;14:1805-14.
9. McCallum RW,
Sainsbury CA, Spiers A, Dominiczak
AF, Petrie JR, Sattar N,
Connell JM. Growth hormone replacement reduces C-reactive protein and
large-artery stiffness but does not alter endothelial function in patients with
adult growth hormone deficiency. Clin Endocrinol (Oxf). 2005;62:473-9.
10. Collison M, James DJ,
Graham D, Holman GD, Connell JM, Dominiczak
AF, Gould GW, Salt IP. Reduced
insulin-stimulated GLUT4 bioavailability in stroke-prone spontaneously
hypertensive rats. Diabetologia. 2005;48:539-46.
11. Dominiczak AF, Graham D, McBride MW, Brain NJ, Lee WK, Charchar FJ,
Tomaszewski M, Delles C, Hamilton CA. Corcoran Lecture. Cardiovascular genomics
and oxidative stress. Hypertension. 2005;45:636-42.
12. McBride MW, Brosnan MJ,
Mathers J, McLellan LI, Miller WH, Graham D, Hanlon N, Hamilton CA, Polke JM,
Lee WK, Dominiczak AF. Reduction of Gstm1 expression in the stroke-prone
spontaneously hypertension rat contributes to increased oxidative stress. Hypertension.
2005;45:786-92.
13. McCallum RW, Hamilton
CA, Graham D, Jardine E, Connell JM, Dominiczak
AF. Vascular responses to IGF-I
and insulin are impaired in aortae of hypertensive rats. J Hypertens.
2005;23:351-8.
14. McGill JK, Gallagher L,
Carswell HV, Irving EA, Dominiczak
AF, Macrae IM. Impaired
functional recovery after stroke in the stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive
rat. Stroke. 2005;36:135-41.
This months Feature
Articles prepared by G A Head, August 2005
THE BEILIN SYMPOSIUM
The
Beilin Symposium will be held from 6th – 7th December
2005. Registrations are now open.
To
view a copy of the invitation, please click here.
To
obtain a registration form, please click here.
Please
go to the Meetings
First website for further information.
Clinical & Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology
(CEPP) is Free to HBPRCA members
CEPP
aims to make a substantial contribution to effective and productive
communication between scientists throughout the world who are working in these
interrelated disciplines. The journal provides a medium for the rapid
publication of original research papers, short communications, rapid
communications and theoretical articles (hypotheses) on the results of clinical
and experimental work in pharmacology and physiology. Invited review articles
are published occasionally.
To
access the journal online visit http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/
and log in or register if you are a new user. Once you are logged in follow the
three simple steps below:
Click on the blue ‘My Synergy’ tab and
the top of the screen and then click the blue ‘Access’ tab in the middle of the
screen.
1. Enter
CEPHBPTRIAL2005 in the ‘Access Token’ box exactly as it appears here. You will
only need to enter this code the first time you use Blackwell Synergy
2. Now click
‘Continue’
You will have access to all content in CEPP every time you log in
until 31st of December 2005.
Manuscripts
can be submitted to CEPP via http://cepp.manuscriptcentral.com/
MONASH MICRO IMAGING WORKSHOP
Monash
University are still running workshops in microscopy techniques. If you are interested in attending, find
out more by contacting the organisers
or downloading a copy of the brochure.
AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY FOR MEDICAL
RESEARCH
ASMR needs your help during 2005, to ensure that medical research
in our country remains competitive and translates to better health and economic
outcomes for all Australians. You need to act now:
¨
Visit your local member twice in 2005. Once before June and again before October.
¨
Before September, write to: your local member;
the Health Minister; the Treasurer; the Prime Minister
Points of focus:
(use examples from your field) Medical research is vital to Australia’s future,
it,
®
underpins the health of all Australians
®
delivers exceptional returns on investment
®
creates knowledge-based jobs
Please
click
here to view information on the ASMR Campaign to
increase Health and Medical Research Funding.
With best wishes,
A/Prof Geoffrey A. Head
________________________________________________________________
Website
Meetings
First
t 61 3
9739 7697
f 61 3 9739 7076
MEETINGS IN
2005
|
|
European
Society of Cardiology
Annual Scientific Meeting Stockholmsmässan, Stockholm, SWEDEN Saturday, September 3 – Wednesday,
September 7, 2005 Click here for the meeting website Click here for the society website
|
Canadian
Cardiovascular Society
Annual Scientific Meeting Quebec, CANADA Saturday, October 22 – Wednesday, October
26, 2005 Click here for meeting website Click here for
society website |
|
American Heart
Association 59th Annual Fall Conference and Scientific
Sessions of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research in association with
the Council on the Kidney in Cardiovascular Disease Click here for the meeting website Click here for the
society website |
American Heart
Association Scientific sessions Click here for the meeting website Click here for the society website
|
|
High Blood Pressure Research Council 27th
Annual Scientific Meeting
Wednesday 7th December 2005 for the
Clinical Workshop starting at 4:30 pm. Thursday-Friday 8-9th December for the
Main Scientific meeting Bio21, 30 Flemington Road, Carlton
Victoria 3053 Australia. Click here for Meeting website and Society Web Page |
ASMR National
Scientific Conference
On Hormones, Fertility and Cancer Couran Cove, Queensland November 20-23 2005 Click here to view the Conference notice
Click
here for
society website |
|
The
Beilin Symposium December 6-7, 2005 Alan Gilbert Building University of Melbourne, Melbourne Click here for Meeting website Click here for the flyer |
Asian Pacific
Society of Nuclear Cardiology
Annual
Scientific Meeting
Annual scientific meeting Mumbai, INDIA Thursday, December 1 – Sunday, December
4, 2005 Click
here for
meeting website Click here for Asian Pacific Society of Nuclear Cardiology website
|
MEETINGS
IN 2006
|
|
International
Conference on Healthy Ageing and Longevity
3rd Annual Meeting Friday, April 28 – Sunday, April 30, 2006 Melbourne Convention and Exhibition
Centre – Melbourne, AUSTRALIA Click here for meeting website
|
International
Society of Hypertension
21st Scientific Meeting Saturday, October 15 – Wednesday, October
19, 2006 Fukuoka International Congress Centre – Fukuoka, JAPAN Click here for meeting website Click here for International Society
of hypertension web page |
|
American Heart Association Obesity, Lifestyle, and Cardiovascular
Disease Symposium. Grand Hyatt Washington - Washington, DC Jan 18-20, 2006 Click here for the meeting website Click here for the
society website |
American
Stroke Association
A Division of
American Heart Association
International Stroke Conference, Gaylord Palms, Kissimmee,
Florida February
16-18 2006 Click here for the meeting website Click here for the
society website |
|
American Society of Hypertension Annual meeting New York City,
Hilton Hotel Click here for the meeting website Click here for the
society website |
European Society of Cardiology Heart Failure 2006 17 June 2006 - 20 June 2006
Helsinki, Finland
Click here for the meeting website
Click here for the society website
|
World Congress
of Cardiology 2006
2-6 September 2006 “Bringing
together the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2006 and the World Heart
Federation's XVth World Congress of Cardiology.”
Barcelona, Spain
Click here for the meeting website
Click here for the society website
|
|