Will simple observation of the shape of the heart one day be able to predict cardiovascular risk? Yes, says an original study recently published in the journal Nature. For the first time, this work, carried out by several Spanish and British institutions, such as Queen Mary University and King's College London (United Kingdom), offers new perspectives on cardiac health and its prevention. Here, the researchers were interested not just in the size and volumes of the heart cavities as in other studies in the past, but particularly in the shape of the heart.
To do this, they studied cardiovascular MRI images from more than 40,000 individuals, all from the vast UK Biobank database, to create 3D models of the ventricles. Their statistical analyses identified no fewer than 11 shapes describing the main variations in the contour of the heart. These imaging analyses were followed by genetic analyses which highlighted 45 specific areas of the human genome, all linked to different heart shapes. And as the researchers point out in their communicates, 14 of them are unpublished and have never before been identified as influencing cardiac characteristics.
The 11 heart shapes identified. Credits: Richard Burns et al., Nature Communications, 2024.
"New information on how we think about heart disease risk"
"This study provides new information on how we think about the risk of heart disease" , "This study is based on the results of the 2012 study," said Patricia B. Munroe, professor of molecular medicine at Queen Mary and co-author of the study published in the journal Nature. “ "We have long known that heart size and volume are important, but by looking at its shape, we are gaining new insights into genetic risk. This discovery could provide clinicians with valuable additional tools to predict disease earlier and more accurately."
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Cardiovascular diseases, the leading cause of death worldwide
With this work, it is undoubtedly a new chapter that opens on the understanding the influence of genetics on heart development. The question remains how to integrate the results into clinical practice so that they can help the greatest number of patients. The task will be vast, but essential, cardiovascular diseases being the leading cause of death worldwide with nearly 18 million deaths per year, according to the World Health Organization.
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