Researchers at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford have found the Tim gene family that appears critical to the development of asthma in mice. Asthma researchers have known for years that the disease has a genetic component, but efforts to pinpoint specific genes have been stymied by the complexity of the disease, which involves more than a dozen independently acting genes.

Homocysteine appears to have a second indication. Scientists at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland have found that homocysteine that determines a person's risk of heart disease may also predict a dangerous surge in blood pressure late in pregnancy. They have found that women with elevated levels of homocysteine early in their pregnancies were nearly three times more likely to develop severe pre-eclampsia--a condition marked by high blood pressure, swelling and protein in the urine--compared with women with lower blood levels of the protein.
Source: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, October 2001;185:781-785.

Researchers at Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden have determined that interleukin-6 (IL-6), an immune system protein that plays a role in inflammation, is a risk factor for death from coronary artery disease (CAD). They suggest that patients with elevated levels of IL-6 may be candidates for early surgical intervention. Their research shows that circulating IL-6 is a strong independent marker of increased risk for mortality in patients with unstable CAD and that while patients with high levels of IL-6 have the highest mortality rates they also benefit most from a strategy of early revascularization.
Source: The Journal of the American Medical Association November 7, 2001