Women are more vulnerable than men to alcohol's long-term effects, reports the October 2008 issue of the Harvard Heart Letter.

Women break down alcohol more slowly than men do. If a woman and a man drink identical glasses of wine with the same meal, she will have a higher blood level of alcohol, and for a longer time. This means her tissues are exposed to more alcohol per drink than a man's. Results from a study in Japan suggest that too much alcohol is bad for a woman's heart and arteries, and earlier work shows it can be hazardous to breast tissue too.

What constitutes "healthy drinking"? Current guidelines say it is one to two drinks a day for men and no more than one a day for women, notes the Harvard Heart Letter. Keep in mind that this recommendation is for the average person. How you respond to alcohol depends on your genes, your diet, and the medications you take.

If you drink, consider taking a daily multivitamin/multimineral supplement. Alcohol blocks the absorption of folic acid and inactivates this important vitamin in the bloodstream, so drinkers need extra folic acid.

Also in this issue:

Dial 911 to start treating heart attack Checking blood pressure at the ankle Less invasive valve surgery speeds recovery Coffee and good health CT scans may interfere with pacemakers The power of potassium Can blood pressure medicines change the sense of taste? How is a blocked stent fixed?

The Harvard Heart Letter is available from Harvard Health Publications, the publishing division of Harvard Medical School, for $24 per year. Subscribe at www.health.harvard/heart or by calling 877-649-9457 (toll-free).

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Fedik Rahimov, Ph.D., the paper's lead author and a scientist at the University of Iowa, explained that the SNP is no more than the substitution of an adenine (A) nucleotide, or unit of DNA, into the enhancer region instead of the usual guanine (G) nucleotide.

"We then were able to take the next step and predict that the G to A shift would alter the binding site for a protein called AP-2a," said Rahimov. "Why was this important? Because AP-2a is known to be involved in craniofacial development and, when altered, causes a syndrome that involves clefts."

"It also suggested AP-2a and IRF-6 interact in the same developmental pathway to make a baby's face," Rahimov continued. "This helps to connect some of the developmental dots in the clefting process, and that's powerful information to when designing possible interventions to prevent a cleft."

But Rahimov and his colleagues still had to nail down their suspicion. Using several large international DNA databases of babies born with clefts and their family members, they found the frequency of their candidate SNP was significantly higher in babies born with cleft lip only. Indeed, the 'A' SNP was responsible for about 18 percent of those born with cleft lip only.

"One of the great challenges in biology right now is to define the communal crosstalk among dividing fetal cells that prompt them to branch, arch, and synchronize their self assembly into intricate, three-dimensional patterns as dissimilar as the muscle in a lip or a cranial bone," said Murray, who also receives support from NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Center for Research Resources. "This work gives us a little more to hang our investigative hats on and will help us discover more genes in the developmental process, information that is critically important for continued progress in the field."

The work was supported by the NIH's National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Clinical Science Ward Program, led by the National Center for Research Resources.

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