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The association between vitamin D deficiency and cardiovascular disease remains a controversial issue. This study aimed to further elucidate the role of vitamin D signaling in the development of left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy and dysfunction. To ablate the vitamin D receptor (VDR) specifically in cardiomyocytes, VDRfl/fl mice were crossed with Mlcv2-Cre mice. To induce LV hypertrophy experimentally by increasing cardiac afterload, transverse aortic constriction (TAC) was employed. Sham or TAC surgery was performed in 4-month-old, male, wild-type, VDRfl/fl, Mlcv2-Cre, and cardiomyocyte-specific VDR knockout (VDRCM-KO) mice. As expected, TAC induced profound LV hypertrophy and dysfunction, evidenced by echocardiography, aortic and cardiac catheterization, cardiac histology, and LV expression profiling 4 weeks post-surgery. Sham-operated mice showed no differences between genotypes. However, TAC VDRCM-KO mice, while having comparable cardiomyocyte size and LV fibrosis to TAC VDRfl/fl controls, exhibited reduced fractional shortening and ejection fraction as measured by echocardiography. Spatial transcriptomics of heart cryosections revealed more pronounced pro-inflammatory and pro-fibrotic gene regulatory networks in the stressed cardiac tissue niches of TAC VDRCM-KO compared to VDRfl/fl mice. Hence, our study supports the notion that vitamin D signaling in cardiomyocytes plays a protective role in the stressed heart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the features influencing finding and returning missing cats to their owners were investigated. The data were collected on the missing and recovered cats in the City of Zagreb, Croatia, during the 2011-2016 period, including the following features: breed, sex, age, colour, hair length, castration and microchipping. A data analysis was performed by use of the Statistica v13.4 software. Out of 946 cats reported to be missing, 372 (39%) were returned to their owners. Purebred (P < 0.01), castrated (P < 0.05), microchipped (P < 0.05) cats, and those with semi-long and long hair (P < 0.05) were more frequently returned to their owners, whereas the sex, age and colour had no significant impact on the missing cat recovery. The study results showed particular cat features influencing their finding to be correlated (P < 0.05). In conclusion, cat owners should attempt to control their movements, in particular of older and non-castrated cats, to reduce the rate of cats going missing. In addition, microchipping would facilitate finding them. The large-scale implementation of the concepts highlighted in this study can contribute to reducing the number of missing cats and increasing the number of cats being returned to their owners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]