RAS inhibitors are used to decrease blood pressure and prevent its deleterious effects in the heart and brain such as...
Dr. Hazen[/caption]
Stanley Hazen, MD, PhD
Chair, Cardiovascular & Metabolic Sciences
Lerner Research Institute
CoSection head, Preventive Cardiology & Cardiovascular Rehabilitation
Heart, Vascular and Thoracic Institute
Cleveland Clinic
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: One of the unique features of COVID is that in some subjects, there unfortunately appear to be long term adverse effects that can occur following resolution of the acute infection. These studies add to the growing body of data showing that COVID-19 infection can enhance risk for experiencing adverse cardiac events (heart attack, stroke, and death) over time.
Dr. Bujold[/caption]
Emmanuel Bujold, Reproduction
Mother and Child Health Unit
CHU De Québec-Université Laval Research Center
Université Laval
Québec, QC Canada
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Would you briefly describe what is meant by preeclampsia?
Response: Preeclampsia is a complication of the second half of pregnancy, manifesting as high blood pressure and renal dysfunction. The only current treatment is to deliver the baby before it becomes complicated by damage to maternal organs or fetal distress.
A few years ago, we demonstrated that aspirin started in the 1st trimester can prevent the majority of preeclampsias in pregnant women at risk. It has therefore become urgent to identify pregnant women at risk as early as the 1st trimester.
Dr. Hoshi[/caption]
Rosangela Akemi Hoshi, Ph.D.
Lemann Foundation Cardiovascular Research Postdoctoral Fellowship
Center for Lipid Metabolomics
Divisions of Preventive and Cardiovascular Medicine
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Boston, MA
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Would you describe the IgG N-glycan profile?
Response: Glycans are sugar coatings of proteins, made of monosaccharide building blocks, that are involved in a variety of biological pathways. Different sugar structures can dictate or modify the protein’s activity through specific interactions with cellular receptors. For example, proteins lacking glycans have a reduced level or a complete loss of function. Glycans are of such importance that the 2022 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded for glycan-based science.
In this study, we examined glycans attached to Immunoglobulins G (IgG) and their link with incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) due to their impact on IgG inflammatory properties. Since inflammation is not only a cause, but also an aggravating factor and a mediator of a worse prognosis in cardiometabolic disorders and CVD, we investigated whether different glycan structures may characterize an at-risk phenotype for CVD development.
Determining glycan profiles involved in multiple conditions can serve prognostic and diagnostic purposes. Yet, unlike other types of macromolecules, glycans are still not as much explored, characterizing a promising but underappreciated class that should be further investigated.
Dr. Zimmermann[/caption]
Prof. Dr. Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann
Director, Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology
University Medical Center Göttingen
Georg-August University
Göttingen, Germany
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Involvement in research and development in the field of tissue engineered heart repair since 25+ years.
Bench-to-bed translation of our research.
MedicalResearch.com: How are the stem cell obtained?
Response: We make use of induced pluripotent stem cells as starting material to obtain heart muscle cells for the engineering of Engineered Human Myocardium (EHM) and its use as Biological Ventricular Assist Tissue (BioVAT).
There seems to be a clear association of certain gut species with atherosclerosis, but more studies are needed to determine...
Dr. Curhan[/caption]
Sharon G. Curhan, MD, ScM|
Director, CHEARS: The Conservation of Hearing Study
Channing Division of Network Medicine
Department of Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA 02114
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Herpes zoster, commonly known as “shingles,” is a viral infection that often causes a painful rash. Shingles can occur anywhere on the head or body. Shingles is caused by the varicella zoster virus (VZV), the same virus that causes chickenpox. After a person has chickenpox, the virus stays in their body for the rest of their life. Years and even decades later, the virus may reactivate as shingles. Almost all individuals age 50 years and older in the US have been infected with the varicella zoster virus and therefore they are at risk for shingles.
About 1 in 3 people will develop shingles during their lifetime, and since age is a risk factor for shingles, this number may increase as the population ages. The risk is also higher among individuals of any age who are immunocompromised due to disease or treatment. A number of serious complications can occur when a person develops shingles, such as post-herpetic neuralgia (long-lasting pain), but there was limited information on whether there are other adverse long-term health implications of developing shingles.
There is a growing body of evidence that links VZV, the virus that causes shingles, to vascular disease. VZV vasculopathy may cause damage to blood vessels and increase the risk of stroke or coronary heart disease. Although some previous studies showed a higher risk of stroke or heart attack around the time of the shingles infection, it was not known whether this higher risk persisted in the long term. Therefore, the question we aimed to address in this study was to investigate whether shingles is associated with higher long-term risk of stroke or coronary heart disease.
To address this question, we conducted a prospective longitudinal study in 3 large US cohorts of >200,000 women and men, the Nurses’ Health Study (>79,000 women), the Nurses’ Health Study II (almost 94,000 women) and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (>31,000 men), without a prior history of stroke or coronary heart disease. We collected information on shingles, stroke and coronary heart disease on biennial questionnaires and confirmed the diagnoses with medical record review. We followed the participants for up to 16 years and evaluated whether those who had developed shingles were at higher risk for stroke or coronary heart disease years after the shingles episode. The outcomes we measured were incident stroke, incident coronary heart disease [defined as having a non-fatal or fatal myocardial infarction (heart attack) or a coronary revascularization procedure (CABG, coronary artery bypass graft or percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty)]. We also evaluated a combined outcome of cardiovascular disease, which included either stroke or coronary heart disease, whichever came first.
Dr. Dhingra[/caption]
Lovedeep Singh Dhingra, MBBS
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Cardiovascular Data Science (CarDS) Lab
Yale School of Medicine
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Wearable devices are shown to have multiple health-related features, including heart rate and activity monitoring, ECG tracing, and blood pressure monitoring.
In our analyses of the nationally-representative Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS), we discovered that patients with and at risk of cardiovascular disease are less likely to use wearables. Older patients, patients with lower education, and patients with lower incomes are less likely to use wearables. Also, among adults with access to wearables, patients with cardiovascular disease use their devices less frequently as compared to the overall population.
Dr. Wu[/caption]
Pensée Wu, MBChB, MD(Res)
Senior Lecturer, Honorary Consultant Obstetrician
Subspecialist in Maternal Fetal Medicine
School of Medicine, Keele University
Staffordshire, UK
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: We looked at outcomes in pregnancies conceived with assisted reproductive technology and compared those with pregnancies that were conceived naturally.
Using a hospital admissions database in the U.S. called the National inpatient sample between 2008 and 2016, we included >100,000 pregnancies conceived with assisted reproductive technology and 34 million naturally conceived pregnancies.
We found that women with assisted reproductive technology-conceived pregnancies had doubled the risk of acute kidney injury and arrhythmias (irregular heart beats). These women also had a 1-3-1.6-fold risk of preterm birth, Caesarean delivery and placental abruption (placenta separating from the womb).
We concluded that women should be informed of these risks during pre-pregnancy counselling. 
Dr. Palatini[/caption]
Paolo Palatini, M.D.
Professor of Internal Medicine
University of Padova
Padova, Italy
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Up to now doctors measured blood pressure (BP) on standing only in elderly people on pharmacological treatment with the purpose of detecting orthostatic hypotension. In young-to-middle-age people BP is currently measured only in the lying or the sitting posture.
Our starting point was that young borderline hypertensive people have an increased sympathetic activity and thus they might be hyperreactive to physical stimuli such as assuming the orthostatic posture which may be deleterious in the long run. This hypothesis was tested in the HARVEST, a study initiated in Italy in 1990, in which over 1200 young patients screened for stage 1 hypertension were enrolled.
Dr. LaMonte[/caption]
Michael J. LaMonte, PhD, MPH
Research Professor (epidemiology)
Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health
School of Public Health and Health Professions
Women’s Health Initiative Northeast Regional Center
University at Buffalo – SUNY
Buffalo, NY 14214
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. LaMonte: The rationale for this study was based on existing study results showing
Dr. Golaszewski[/caption]
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Natalie Golaszewski, PhD
Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Social isolation and loneliness are growing public health concerns as they are associated with health conditions that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease including obesity, smoking, physical inactivity, poor diet, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Dr. Hripcsak[/caption]
George Hripcsak, MD, MS.
Chair and Vivian Beaumont Allen Professor of Biomedical Informatics
Department of Biomedical Informatics,
Columbia University Irving Medical Center
New York, NY
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: ACE inhibitors and ARBs are anti-hypertension drugs that have related yet distinct mechanisms of action, and they are both recommended as first-line therapies for treating hypertension. There have been no large head-to-head comparisons of ACE inhibitors and ARBs, although there are several studies with limited size and often restricted (e.g., high-risk) populations. While there are some conflicting results in the literature, the current evidence seems to indicate that they are similar in effectiveness but that ACE inhibitors have more side effects (e.g., cough and angioedema).
Dr. Fornwalt[/caption]
Brandon K Fornwalt, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Director Department of Imaging Science and Innovation
Geisinger
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is an abnormal heart rhythm that is associated with outcomes such as stroke, heart failure and death. If we know a patient has atrial fibrillation, we can treat them to reduce the risk of stroke by nearly two-thirds. Unfortunately, patients often don’t know they have AF. They present initially with a stroke, and we have no chance to treat them before this happens. If we could predict who is at high risk of either currently having AF or developing it in the near future, we could intervene earlier and hopefully reduce bad outcomes like stroke. Artificial intelligence approaches may be able to help with this task.
Dr. Langford[/caption]
Aisha T. Langford, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor
Department of Population Health
Co-Director, CTSI Recruitment and Retention Core
NYU Grossman School of Medicine
NYU Langone Health
New York, NY 10016
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: In 2018, the American Heart Association (AHA) published an updated Scientific Statement on Resistant Hypertension. The term apparent treatment-resistant hypertension (aTRH) is used when pseudoresistance (e.g., white coat effect, medication nonadherence) cannot be excluded. The current study was designed to investigate if Black adults with aTRH, a group disproportionately affected by cardiovascular disease, receive evidence-based approaches to lower blood pressure as recommended in the 2018 AHA Scientific Statement.
Specifically, we studied healthy lifestyle factors including not smoking, not consuming alcohol, ≥75 minutes of vigorous-intensity or ≥150 minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity per week, and body mass index <25 kg/m2; and recommended antihypertensive medication classes among US Black adults.
Dr. Yaghi[/caption]
Shadi Yaghi, MD
Assistant Professor
Department of Neurology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Director, Clinical Vascular Neurology Research, NYU Langone Health
Director, Vascular Neurology, NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Our aim was to determine the characteristics of imaging proven ischemic stroke in the setting of COVID-19 infection and compare them to those of ischemic stroke but without COVID-19 infection.
MedicalResearch.comInterview with:
Eric J. Belin de Chantemèle, D.Sc.
Associate Professor
Department of Medicine, Cardiology
Vascular Biology Center
Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University
Jessica L Faulkner, PhD
Post-doctoral Fellow
Vascular Biology Center
Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: It is generally accepted in the medical community that women are more salt sensitive than men. By “salt sensitive” we mean that blood pressure increases with increases in salt in the diet.
While we have known for a long time that women are more likely to experience problems with their blood pressure that are associated with the salt that they eat, the reasons why remain largely unknown and, therefore, the best way to treat it is also unknown. With the average American eating roughly twice the salt recommended by the American Heart Association guidelines, the effects of dietary salt on blood pressure are very important. Our latest publication in the journal American Heart Association’s journal Hypertension shows that female mice are more prone to high blood pressure when on a high salt diet than males.
MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report?
Response: Our report begins to shed some light on why women may have a greater risk of developing high blood pressure due to eating too much salt. We recently found that a hormone, termed “aldosterone” is acting inappropriately in females in response to a lot of salt in the diet. In healthy individuals who are not salt sensitive, aldosterone is decreased by salt in the diet and is protective to the blood vessels. However, in female mice it is less likely that aldosterone will be decreased, and this lack of decrease of aldosterone leads to blood vessel damage and high blood pressure in our study.In contrast, our male mice in our study suppressed aldosterone when given a high salt diet, and did not develop blood vessel damage or high blood pressure.We believe this variation in aldosterone production in women may be a reason why they are clinically more likely to have a blood pressure response to high salt diets.
Dipender Gill[/caption]
Dipender Gill
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
London, United Kingdon
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Iron status has previously been associated with risk of various types of cardiovascular disease, including stroke. However, the observational research methodologies that identified these associations can be affected by confounding from environmental factors and reverse causation.
We used randomly allocated genetic variants that affect iron status to investigate its effect on risk of different types of ischemic stroke, and found evidence to support that higher iron status increases risk of cardioembolic stroke.
Dr. Park[/caption]
Sung Kyun Park Sc.D. M.P.H.
Associate professor of epidemiology and environmental health sciences
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Ann Arbor, Michigan
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: It is poorly understood that why some patients need more drugs to control high blood pressure than others. Resistant hypertension is that blood pressure is not controlled with 3 medications of different classes including diuretics or is required 4 or more medications of different classes for blood pressure controls. Genes, obesity, physical inactivity, high salt diet, pain medications may do something. Lead is a widespread environmental toxin that can influence high blood pressure. In this study, we examined whether long-term exposure to lead, measured as bone lead, is associated with the risk of resistant hypertension.
Bone lead offers a better method over blood lead measurement to discern long-term lead exposure and accumulation.
The main finding of our study is that low-level lead exposure, measured in the tibia (hard bone), is associated with higher risk of development of resistant hypertension in a cohort of patients diagnosed with hypertension. 
Mohammadhassan (Hassan) Mirbolouk, MD
American Heart Association Tobacco Regulation Center (A-TRAC)
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Baltimore, MD 21224.
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: E-cigarettes were introduced first in US market as a less harmful method of nicotine delivery which potentially would help smokers to have a less harmful option.
However, overtime e-cigarette found its niche of consumers in the younger/tobacco naïve population. Our study is amongst the first studies that describes those who use e-cigarette without any history of combustible-cigarette smoking. 
Professor Phyo Kyaw Myint MBBS MD FRCP(Edin) FRCP(Lond)
Clinical Chair in Medicine of Old Age
Academic Lead: Ageing Clinical & Experimental Research &
Director of Clinical Academic Training Development
The Lead Academic, Aberdeen Clinical Academic Training (ACAT) Programmes
School of Medicine, Medical Sciences & Nutrition
College of Life Sciences & Medicine, University of Aberdeen
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: While Mediterranean Diet has been linked to reduced stroke risk it remains unclear
(1) its impact on populations within non-Mediterranean countries;
(2) its specific impact on different gender;
(3) the effect observed when using more robust dietary assessments; and (4) which specific components of the diet are most protective.
We therefore studied more than 23 thousand men and women (mainly British Caucasian) aged 40 years or older in Norfolk, UK as part of EPIC-Norfolk study and we found that the greater adherence to Mediterranean dietary pattern is linked to a significant reduction in stroke risk in women but not in men. This benefit was seen across the whole middle and older age population (particularly for women) regardless of their existing risk factors such as high blood pressure.
Dr. Hofmann[/caption]
Robin Hofmann, MD PhD
Senior consultant cardiologist and researcher
Department of clinical science and education
Södersjukhuset, at Karolinska Institute
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Oxygen has been used to treat patients suffering a heart attack for more than a century, despite the fact that such treatment has not had any scientifically proven effect on patients who have normal oxygen levels in their blood. Since the turn of the millennium, researchers worldwide have started to question whether oxygen therapy for heart attacks is ineffective – or may even be harmful.