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Fatigue in dialysis patients may be a warning sign of an impending heart attack or other serious heart problems, a new study suggests.

Japanese researchers had 788 dialysis patients complete a fatigue questionnaire and found that about 16 percent of them had a high fatigue score. After two years of follow-up, patients with high fatigue scores were more than twice as likely to have suffered cardiovascular events, such as a heart attack or stroke.

The fatigue questionnaire used in the study differentiates fatigue from many factors associated with it, including anxiety, depression, pain, infection and overwork. The researchers found that fatigue was the strongest predictor of cardiovascular risk, even in patients with known risk factors, such as diabetes, malnutrition and previous cardiovascular disease.

“Our research identifies fatigue as an important bio-alarm to predict cardiovascular events in dialysis patients, particularly those who are well-nourished and healthy-looking,” study co-leader Dr. Hidenori Koyama of Osaka City University Graduate School of Medicine, said in a news release.

The study will appear in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Koyama and colleagues said further research is needed to learn more about the relationship between fatigue in dialysis patients and increased risk of cardiovascular events.

“Another important question is whether interventions for fatigue will be effective in preventing cardiovascular events,” Koyama added.

SOURCE: American Society of Nephrology.

New research is providing more insight into a gene linked to autism in humans: When the gene is turned off in mice, they have trouble learning and become obsessive.

Researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas report that a drug reduces the obsessiveness in the mice, raising hopes that it might do the same thing in people, although that’s not yet proven.

“Clinically, this study highlights the possibility that some autism-related behaviors can be reversed through drugs targeting specific brain function abnormalities,” said study senior author Dr. Craig Powell, an assistant professor of neurology, said in a university news release. “Understanding one abnormality that can lead to increased, repetitive motor behavior is not only important for autism, but also potentially for obsessive-compulsive disorder, compulsive hair-pulling and other disorders of excessive activity.”

The researchers studied a protein called neuroligin-1, which helps nerve cells better communicate with each other. The mice who had a disabled form of the gene were normal in some ways but obsessively groomed themselves and took longer to learn a maze than other mice.

A drug called D-cycloserine seemed to help, however.

“Our goal was not to make an ‘autistic mouse’ but rather to understand better how autism-related genes might alter brain function that leads to behavioral abnormalities,” Powell said. “By studying mice that lack neuroligin-1, we hope to understand better how this molecule affects communication between neurons and how that altered communication affects behavior.”

The study appears in issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.