

Virus rebuilds heart's own pacemaker in animal tests - drucken
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20713986

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lostlogin
Wonder what happens when the patient has multiple pacing nodes - does it
organise to make one (correct!) or go back to having ectopic nodes (oh dear).
Pretty impressive either way, but the research mountain here must be huge.

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JshWright
In theory, whichever node depolarized first would trigger the depolarization
of the second node.

So whichever node has a faster intrinsic rate would be the primary node.

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lostlogin
This reply is addressed to Ars as well as both points are good and similar. I
assume you both mean that synchronization occurs across the infected cells? Or
do you mean that it occurs across the patient's heart whether or not infected?
Ectopic nodes seem to fire randomly or upon certain triggers/stressor and
thereby lose synchronization (otherwise how would one a patient be diagnosed).
It would be handy if the virus rewired poorly wired hearts to be better.

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bitwize
Shoot, we're getting closer and closer to having in real life Fry's parasitic
nematodes who continually _improve_ his body...

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gizmo686
Futurama?

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wtrk
I'm not a Futurama head, so I looked it up:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasites_Lost>

