Nathan Tucker

WOOD RIVER - It was a big Friday night at Memorial Stadium on the campus of East Alton-Wood River Community High School, and not just because it was the

ST. LOUIS - Given their precarious position in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference playoff race, St. Louis City SC likely needed to win all

WOOD RIVER - It was Homecoming night on a muggy late September Friday evening in Wood River, and the East Alton-Wood River Oilers’ football team

Salem Runs Up Score Early, Overwhelm Oilers 42-8By Nathan Tuckerthisisnatetucker@gmailWOOD RIVER - It was Homecoming night on a muggy late September

ALTON - Friday’s rains let up just in time for football at Public School Stadium in Alton, as the Redbirds of Alton High hosted the Belleville East

ST. LOUIS - For the last time in 2024, Major League Soccer was played in St. Louis on Saturday evening, when St. Louis City SC hosted the MLS Playoff-bound

SAINT PAUL, Minn. - St. Louis City SC went into the 2024 Major League Soccer season with expectations of reaching the playoffs and righting the wrongs

ROXANA - Riverbend rivals Roxana and Marquette Catholic squared off on the football field Friday night. It was Senior Night for the Shells, honoring a

BACKGROUND: Isolated posterior leaflet mitral valve prolapse (PostMVP), a common form of MVP, often referred as fibroelastic deficiency, is considered a degenerative disease. PostMVP patients are usually asymptomatic and often undiagnosed until chordal rupture. The present study aims to characterize familial PostMVP phenotype and familial recurrence, its genetic background, and the pathophysiological processes involved. METHODS: We prospectively enrolled 284 unrelated MVP probands, of whom 178 (63%) had bi-leaflet MVP and 106 had PostMVP (37%). Familial screening within PostMVP patients allowed the identification of 20 families with inherited forms of PostMVP for whom whole genome sequencing was carried out in probands. Functional in vivo and in vitro investigations were performed in zebrafishand in Hek293T cells. RESULTS: In the 20 families with inherited form of PostMVP, 38.8% of relatives had a MVP/prodromal form, mainly of the posterior leaflet, with transmission consistent with an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance. Compared with control relatives, PostMVP family patients have clear posterior leaflet dystrophy on echocardiography. Patients with PostMVP present a burden of rare genetic variants in ARHGAP24. ARHGAP24 encodes the filamin A binding RhoGTPase-activating protein FilGAP and its silencing in zebrafish leads to atrioventricular regurgitation. In vitro functional studies showed that variants of FilGAP, found in PostMVP families, are loss-of-function variants impairing cellular adhesion and mechano-transduction capacities. CONCLUSIONS PostMVP should not only be considered an isolated degenerative pathology but as a specific heritable phenotypic trait with genetic and functional pathophysiological origins. The identification of loss-of-function variants in ARHGAP24 further reinforces the pivotal role of mechano-transduction pathways in the pathogenesis of MVP. CLINICAL PERSPECTIVE Isolated posterior mitral valve prolapse (PostMVP), often called fibro-elastic deficiency MVP, is at least in some patients, a specific inherited phenotypic trait PostMVP has both genetic and functional pathophysiological origins Genetic variants in the ARHGAP24 gene, which encodes for the FilGAP protein, cause progressive Post MVP in familial cases, and impair cell adhesion and mechano-transduction capacities

HARDIN - Playoff football has become a November tradition in Calhoun County, with the Warriors now regulars in the IHSA 1A state tournament. On Saturday,