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Ballou Skies | c/o PLB, Inc.
Penn Center West, Building
III | Suite 411
Pittsburgh, PA 15276 |
(412) 787-8800
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Read Ohio State
Medical Center Progress Report: January 2012
Read Ohio State
Medical Center Progress Report: August, 2011
Read
"Circulation": July 2011, Journal of the American Heart Association
Read Ohio State
University Progress Report: May 15, 2011
What if your contribution, your
dollar, your donation was the one to make the difference in the life
of individuals stricken with Muscular Dystrophy?
The mission of BallouSkies is to
provide funds to map the hearts of boys and girls with Duchenne
Muscular Dystrophy.
MD weakens all muscles. Without a cure, the most important
muscle, the heart, will fail. If we can look at numerous
hearts and map the progression of scarring and the weakening of this
vital muscle … we can hopefully extend lives until there is a cure!
Ohio
State
University
Our team at the
Ohio
State
University is working on making a clearer
picture, literally, of the heart in muscular dystrophies.
Preliminary findings include unique patterns of heart muscle injury
using a special noninvasive imaging test called cardiac magnetic
resonance (CMR). This injury or scarring of the heart can develop
before there are detectable changes in the heart’s function by, for
example, echocardiography. Our goal is to identify the earliest
signs of the heart muscle injury,
before muscular
dystrophy patients develop any symptoms of heart disease. Earlier
recognition can allow initiation of medications that are proven to
preserve heart muscle function and reduce the risk of heart failure
or abnormal heart rhythms down the road.
Greetings from The Ohio State University, where we have made
significant progress with your invaluable support. This letter
summarizes how far we’ve come in a short time to finding better ways
to help boys with muscular dystrophy live longer, healthier lives.
Our goals are to: 1) improve diagnosis of heart muscle disease for
individuals with muscular dystrophies with noninvasive,
high-resolution heart imaging so that beneficial treatment can be
started sooner, 2) better understand through research how muscle can
be protected from damage to guide development of better treatments,
and 3) educate doctors and scientists so that our advances can
benefit patients all around the world.
[ read more ]
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OSU Heart Clinic Research Team headed by Dr. Jill Rafael-Fortney (center)
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Jill Rafael-Fortney Bio |
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Subha Raman
Bio |
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Dr. Rafael-Fortney is an Associate Professor in the
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry at the
Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus, OH.
The goals of her laboratory are to unravel the mechanisms of
skeletal muscle and heart disease in order to design
treatments for Duchenne muscular dystrophy and heart
failure. She was the recipient of a prestigious Burroughs
Wellcome Fund Career Award and an American Heart Association
Established Investigator Award, and her research has also
been supported by the NIH and the Muscular Dystrophy
Association. She has supported the development of many young
scientists, and has published over 40 papers in
peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Fortney received her B.A. from Cornell University,
her Ph.D. from the Department of Human Genetics at the
University of Michigan,
and carried out her postdoctoral training at the University
of Oxford, England. She is also married and the mother of
two children.
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Dr.
Raman is Associate Professor at the
Ohio State
University. After undergraduate and
graduate studies in electrical engineering as a National
Science Foundation fellow, she completed medical training
including fellowship in cardiovascular medicine at OSU, with
additional training in CMR at
Wake Forest
University. Upon joining
the faculty of
Ohio
State in 2002, Dr. Raman
has built a research team supported in part by the National
Institutes of Health dedicated to innovations in
cardiovascular research that provide earlier detection, more
accurate diagnosis, and personalized treatment of
cardiovascular disease, focusing on heritable heart and
vascular disease. In addition to her clinical activities
serving the cardiovascular health of individual patients and
families, she is a dedicated teacher of medicine to the next
generation of clinicians and scientists.
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