Differential modulation of polyunsaturated fatty acids in patients with myocardial infarction treated with ticagrelor or clopidogrel

Untargeted metabolomics is used to refine the development of biomarkers for the diagnosis of cardiovascu-lar disease. Myocardial infarction (MI) has major individual and societal consequences for patients, whoremain at high risk of secondary events, despite advances in pharmacological therapy. To monitor their dif-ferential response to treatment, we performed untargeted plasma metabolomics on 175 patients from theplatelet inhibition and patient outcomes (PLATO) trial treated with ticagrelor and clopidogrel, two commonP2Y12inhibitors. We identified a signature that discriminates patients, which involves polyunsaturated fattyacids (PUFAs) and particularly the omega-3 fatty acids docosahexaenoate and eicosapentaenoate. Theknown cardiovascular benefits of PUFAs could contribute to the efficacy of ticagrelor. Our work, beyondpointing out the high relevance of untargeted metabolomics in evaluating response to treatment, establishesPUFA metabolism as a pathway of clinical interest in the recovery path from MI

The history of public health in the modern Middle East: The environmental–medical turn

The field of Middle Eastern history began as an attempt to understand how Europeans came to dominate the region. As a result, when medicine and the environment were discussed, they were used to highlight European technological and scientific advances in these fields, and describe the processes through which Islamic medical and scientific concepts were replaced. The first wave of scholarship on the history of medicine in the region focused primarily on 19th‐century Egypt, where the state sponsored the development of a public health system to protect military readiness and combat epidemic diseases such as cholera and plague. This article highlights recent scholarship in the history of health, medicine, and the environment during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and illustrates how this lens (the “environmental‐medical turn”) provides new perspectives on the social and political history of the Middle East. I argue that the environmental‐medical turn provides a new avenue for locating illiterate members of society—the peasant and middle classes—in the archive; by exploring moments of crisis leading to protest and rebellion, and examining data revealing hardship and suffering, Middle Eastern historians can explore the complex roots of social and political events, and historians of medicine and the environment can include the region in transnational and comparative studies