LAUSR

Heart failure persists as a significant cause of death and low quality of life. It is a major public health issue of which the prevalence continues to rise. In industrialized countries, heart failure affects near 2% of the adult population, a prevalence which exceeds 10% after the age of 70.1 With an aging population, this burden is predicted to continuously rise. Healthcare costs also steadily increase and represent a significant economical burden.2 Despite major advances in its diagnosis, treatment and prognosis, continuous efforts from the biomedical research community are warranted to discover new drugs and biomarkers to implement a personalized healthcare. Heart failure is a complex disease and its development and progression are governed by an intricate network of multiple biological pathways. The simplistic ‘central dogma of molecular biology’, from which proteins–building blocks of the human body–are translated from messenger RNA molecules, themselves transcribed from DNA, appears to be much more complex than previously thought. Homeostatic regulation of gene expression is paramount to the normal functioning of our body and is governed at multiple levels, including at the epigenetics level.