A Puerto Rican couple raised in families of a man who died of complications with high blood pressure, now dies of the blood vessels around them, according to the paper in the American Journal of Physiology–Cell Physiology.
María Andrés and Montserrat San Miguel Capistrano, both of whom were born in 1938 in Puerto Rico, were among 115 Puerto Rican children born between 1948 and 1964 that a group of researchers led by associate professor of biomedical sciences Ahmed Mursic, Ph.D., at Penn State, studied to determine the risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases by adolescence.
“Ultimately the call to action was to include the information of combinatorial cardiovascular risk prediction in the cardiology framework,” Mursic said. “Good heart function and normal blood pressure control are vital for transplantation, and can protect the many children who lose their lives to cardiovascular disease.”Mursic, who is now a professor of internal medicine at the University of Puerto Rico, wants to provide these children–and other individuals with information about heart disease who are at risk of dying from this debilitating disease.