Circulation on the Run Carolyn Lam, MBBS, PhD

This week, please join author Vincent Aengevaeren and Associate Editor Jarett Berry as they discuss the article "Exercise Volume Versus Intensity and the Progression of Coronary Atherosclerosis in Middle-Aged and Older Athletes: Findings From the MARC-2 Study."
Dr. Gregory Hundley:
Welcome listeners to this March 28th issue, and I am one of your co-hosts, Dr. Gregory Hundley, Associate Editor and Director of the Pauley Heart Center at VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia.
Dr. Peder Myhre:
And I'm Dr. Peder Myhre, Social Media Editor from Akershus University Hospital and University of Oslo in Norway. And today, Greg, we have such an interesting feature paper. It comes to us from Professor Aengevaeren and it discusses the progression of coronary atherosclerosis in middle-aged and older athletes. They're looking at exercise volume versus intensity in the MARC-2 study. So Greg, this is really something us master athletes are interested in, and I'm really excited to hear this discussion.
Dr. Gregory Hundley:
Very nice. Well, how about we jump into some of the other articles first, Peder? And I could go first. So Peder, my first article involves pregnancy related complications. And as you know, these pregnancy complications are associated with increased risk of developing cardiometabolic diseases and an earlier mortality. However, much of the prior research has been limited to individuals of White race. So these investigators led by Professor Cuilin Zhang from the National Institutes of Health aimed to investigate pregnancy complications in association with total and cause specific mortality in a racially diverse cohort, and then evaluate whether associations differ between Black and White individuals. And they performed their work using the Collaborative Perinatal Project, which was a prospective cohort study of 48,197 pregnant women across 12 US clinical centers from the period of time of 1959 through 1966.
Dr. Peder Myhre:
Oh wow, Greg. Almost 50,000 pregnant women. Very huge initiative. So what did they find?
Dr. Gregory Hundley:
Right, Peder. So overall, 15% of participants had preterm delivery, 5% had hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, and 1% had gestational diabetes or impaired fasting glucose. Now, the preterm delivery was higher in individuals of Black race at 20% relative to those of White race, which were 10%. Now, in relation to all-cause mortality, the following were associated with increase adjusted hazard ratios. One, spontaneous labor; two, induced labor; three, pre-labor cesarean delivery. And all of those, those adjusted hazard ratios in comparison with a full term delivery.
Next, in the world of blood pressure, preeclampsia and eclampsia as well as superimposed preeclampsia and eclampsia were all associated with adjusted hazard ratios that were elevated compared to individuals with normal blood pressure. And then finally, in those individuals with gestational diabetes or impaired fasting glucose, their adjusted hazard ratio, again for all-cause mortality, was elevated relative to those with normal glycemia. Now interestingly, in comparing the two racial groups, preterm induced labor was associated with greater mortality risk among those of Black race relative to those of White race. However, or while, preterm pre-labor cesarean delivery interestingly and conversely was associated with a higher adjusted hazard ratio for those of White race as compared to individuals of Black race.
So Peder, in summary, within this large diverse US cohort, pregnancy complications were associated with higher mortality almost 50 years later. And the higher incidents of some complications occurred in individuals of Black race. And differential associations with mortality risk indicate that because of these racial differences, there could really be disparities in pregnancy related health. And finally, that these disparities and their relationship with overall health really could have long life implications for

This week, please join author Mikael Dellborg and Associate Editor Gerald Greil as they discuss the article "Adults With Congenital Heart Disease: Trends in Event-Free Survival Past Middle Age."
Dr. Greg Hundley:
Welcome listeners to this March 21st issue. And I am one of your co-hosts, Dr. Greg Hundley, Associate Editor Director of the Pauley Heart Center at VSU Health in Richmond, Virginia.
Dr. Peder Myhre:
And I am the other co-host, Dr. Peder Myhre, from Akershus University Hospital and University of Oslo in Norway.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
Well, Peder, we have a very interesting feature discussion this week. It focuses on adults with congenital heart disease. And as you are aware, over the last 25 to 30 years the survival rate of individuals with congenital heart disease has really improved. And this group, led by Professor Dellborg, will discuss with us more on results from a Swedish registry examining patients after the age of 18 with adult congenital heart disease. But before we get to that, how about we grab a cup of coffee and jump into some of the other articles in the issue? Would you like to go first?
Dr. Peder Myhre:
I would love it to, Greg, thank you. So Greg, the first paper is about aortic stenosis and the genome-wide association study looking at aortic stenosis in patients from the Million Veteran Program. And as you know, Greg, calcific aortic stenosis is the most common valve of heart disease in older adults and has no effective preventive therapies. Genome-wide Association studies, GWAS, can identify genes influencing disease and may help prioritize therapeutic targets for aortic stenosis. And in this study, which comes to us from co-corresponding authors, O'Donnell from VA Boston Health System and Dr. Natarajan from Massachusetts General Hospital, both in Boston Massachusetts, performed genetic analysis in 14,451 cases with aortic stenosis and almost 400,000 controls in the Multiancestry Million Veteran Program. And replication for these results was performed in five other cohorts.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
Wow, Peder, so a very large gene-wide association study. So what did they find?
Dr. Peder Myhre:
So Greg, the authors found 23 lead variants representing 17 unique genomic regions. And of the 23 lead variants, 14 were significant in replication, representing 11 unique genomic regions. And five replicated genomic regions were previously known risk loci for aortic stenosis, while six were novel. And of the 14 replicated lead variants, only two of these were also significant in atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease GWAS. And in Mendelian randomization, lipoprotein a and LDL cholesterol were both associated with aortic stenosis, but the association between LDL cholesterol and aortic stenosis was attenuated when adjusting for LP a. So Greg, in conclusion this study identified six novel genomic regions for aortic stenosis, and secondary analysis highlighted roles of lipid metabolism, inflammation, cellular senescence and adiposity in the pathobiology of or stenosis, and also clarified the shared and differential genetic architectures of aortic stenosis with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
Wow, Peder, what a beautiful description. Very comprehensive study. Well, my study comes to us from the world of preclinical science and, Peder, it involves embryonic heart development. So Peder, placental and embryonic heart development occur in parallel, and these organs have been proposed to exert reciprocal regulation during gestation. Poor presentation has been associated with congenital heart disease, an important cause of infant mortality. However, the mechanisms by which altered placental development can lead to congenital heart disease remain really unresolved. So in this study, led by Dr. Suchita Nadkarni from Queen Mary University of London and colleagues, the team used an in vivo neutrophil-driven placental inflammation model via antibody depletion of maternal circul

This week, please join author Milind Desai and Associate Editor Mark Link as they discuss the article "Dose-Blinded Myosin Inhibition in Patients With Obstructive Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Referred for Septal Reduction Therapy: Outcomes Through 32 Weeks."
Dr. Carolyn Lam:
Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. We're your co-hosts. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
And I'm Dr Greg Hundley, Associate Editor, Director of the Poly Heart Center at VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia.
 Dr. Carolyn Lam:
Oh, Greg. Today's feature paper is just so, so important. It's the long-term follow up or the longer term follow up of the VALOR-HCM trial. And this, if I can remind you, examined the effect of mavacampten on the need for septal reduction therapy in patients with intractable symptoms from obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. So we're going to hear the results through 32 weeks, but not until we discuss the other papers in today's issue. And I'd like to go first.
I'd like to tell you about a paper that really provides the foundation for deciphering chamber selective gene transcription. So in this study from Dr. William Pu of Boston Children's Hospital and colleagues, authors mapped the chromatin features of atrial and ventricular cardiomyocytes and nominated candidate chamber selective enhancers based on differential features. The candidate enhancers were tested in vivo using adeno associated virus delivered massively parallel reporter assay leading to identification of 229 chamber selective enhancers. They then characterized chromatin features of these chamber selective enhancers and used dense mutagenesis to identify their essential features. Altogether the study suggested that estrogen-related receptor promoted ventricular chamber selective enhancer activity. They validated this prediction by showing that estrogen-related receptor inactivation led to loss of ventricular cardiomyocyte identity. So in aggregate, the studies yielded a rich resource of chamber selective chromatin features and chamber selective enhancers, and began to unravel the molecular basis for chamber selective transcriptional programs.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
Wow. So Carolyn, estrogen-related receptor promotion and then inactivation and finding really very interested preclinical results. So tell us now what are the clinical implications of this very nice study.
 Dr. Carolyn Lam:
Wow. I mean, there are just so many implications. It can facilitate functional interpretation of genetic associations between variants and cardiac disease. Of course, it opens the doors to potential gene therapies and regenerative medicine and finally, identification of transcription regulators of the chamber identity really yield important mechanistic insights into the pathogenesis of important diseases like atrial fibrillation and cardiomyopathy.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
Wow, Carolyn, beautifully summarized. Well, my next paper pertains to COVID vaccines. So Carolyn, as we have seen SARS-CoV-2 targeted mRNA vaccines are a life-saving medical advancement developed to combat, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic. But in rare cases, some individuals can develop myocarditis following these mRNA vaccinations. Cases of adolescents and young adults developing post vaccine myocarditis have been reported globally, although the underlying immuno profiles of these individuals, they really haven't been described in detail. So these authors led by Dr. Lael Yonker from Massachusetts General Hospital, performed extensive system serology SARS-CoV-2 specific T-cell analysis and cytokine and SARS-CoV-2 antigen profiling on blood samples collected from adolescents and young adults either developed myocarditis or were asymptomatic following SARS-CoV-2 targeted mRNA vaccination.
 Dr. Carolyn Lam:
Wow. Wow. Important

This week, please join author Xuerong Wen, Associate Editor Sandeep Das, and Guest Host Mercedes Carnethon as they discuss the article "Comparative Effectiveness and Safety of Direct Oral Anticoagulants and Warfarin in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation and Chronic Liver Disease: A Nationwide Cohort Study."
Dr. Carolyn Lam:
Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass of the journal and its editors. We're your co-hosts. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
And I'm Dr. Greg Hundley, associate editor, Director of the Poly Heart Center at VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia.
Dr. Carolyn Lam:
Greg, I'm so excited about today's feature paper. It deals with the important condition where atrial fibrillation exists in patients with chronic liver disease and what do we do for anticoagulation in these patients. It's a comparative effectiveness and safety study of direct oral anticoagulants compared with warfarin in these patients. A huge, wonderful, important study that we're going to discuss. But before we get there, I'd like to tell you about some papers in this issue and I'd like you to tell me about some too. You got your coffee?
Dr. Greg Hundley:
Absolutely.
Dr. Carolyn Lam:
All right. I'll go first In this paper that describes a quantitative prognostic tool for the mitral valve prolapse spectrum and it's derived from the new mitral regurgitation international database quantitative or MIDA-Q registry, which enrolled more than 8,000 consecutive patients from North America, Europe, Middle East. And these were patients all diagnosed with isolated mitral valve prolapse or MVP in routine clinical practice of academic centers, all of which also did prospective degenerative mitral regurgitation quantification. The MIDA-Q score was calculated based on characteristics collected in routine practice combining the established MIDA score, which integrated guideline based markers of outcomes like age, New York Heart Association status, atrial fibrillation, LA size, pulmonary artery pressure left ventricular and systolic, I mentioned, and ejection fraction. Integrating that with scoring points based on the degenerative mitral regurgitation quantitation that is measuring effective regurgitant orifice and volume.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
Very interesting Carolyn. So a scoring system that combines clinical information with what we might assess with echocardiography like regurgitant volume or regurgitant orifice area. So how well did this mortality risk score perform?
Dr. Carolyn Lam:
So the new score was associated with an extreme range of predicted survival under medical management and that ranged from 97% to 5% at five years for the extreme score ranges. And it was strongly, independently and incrementally associated with long-term survival over all the markers of outcomes. So the authors concluded, and these by the way were authors led by Dr. Maurice Serrano from Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. These authors concluded that the score should allow integrated risk assessment of patients with mitral valve prolapse to refine clinical decision making in routine practice and ultimately reduce degenerative mitral regurgitation under treatment.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
Wonderful description Carolyn. Well I'm going to switch to the world of electrophysiology, Carolyn. And so as you know, the Brugada syndrome is an inherited arrhythmia syndrome caused by loss of function variants in the cardiac sodium channel gene SCN5A and that occurs in about 20% of subjects. And these authors led by Dr. Dan Roden at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine identified a family with four individuals diagnosed with Brugada syndrome, harboring a rare missense variant in the cardiac transcription factor, TBX5, but no SCN5A variant. And upon identifying these individuals, their objective was to establish TBX5 as a causative gen

This week, please join author Jennifer Conway as she discusses the article "The Prevalence and Association of Exercise Test Abnormalities With Sudden Cardiac Death and Transplant-Free Survival in Childhood Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy."
Dr. Carolyn Lam:
Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass of the journal and its editors. We're your co-hosts. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
And I'm Dr. Greg Hundley, associate editor and director of the Pauley Heart Center at VSU Health in Richmond, Virginia. Carolyn, wow. We're closing out the month of February, this is February 28th. And the feature discussion today, very interesting. So in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, we often see them as adults, and guidelines are very clear on how to manage them. What about patients' children that present with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy? How do we manage them? Should we do exercise testing? Well, to get the answers to some of those questions, you'll have to wait listeners to our feature discussion today. But first we're going to grab a cup of coffee and jump into some of the other articles in the issue. Carolyn, would you like to start?
Dr. Carolyn Lam:
I would love to. With this first paper, which is a preclinical study revealing a novel signaling axis in cardiorenal interaction.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
Wow. Pray tell.
Dr. Carolyn Lam:
I will. So this paper is from Dr. Molkentin and colleagues from University of Cincinnati. And using mouse models of ischemia reperfusion acute kidney injury and unilateral ureteral obstruction, these authors found that interleukin 33 release from the kidney endothelium during acute kidney injury communicates with the heart through the suppression of tumorigenicity 2 or ST2L receptor on cardiomyocytes. And that's where it causes hypertrophy, fibrosis, and loss of cardiac function. Mice lacking interleukin 33 or mice lacking the gene encoding this ST2L receptor on cardiomyocytes, but not endothelial cells or fibroblasts, were protected from acute kidney injury induced hypertrophy and cardiomyopathy. Indeed, inhibition of acute interleukin 33 release from the kidney after acute kidney injury with a monoclonal antibody prevented cardiomyopathy. So the interleukin 33 ST2L signaling axis is a novel potential therapeutic target to protect the heart during kidney injury.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
Wow, Carolyn, really interesting preclinical science relating acute kidney industry and cardiomyopathy. Well, I have another paper from the World of Preclinical Science. And, Carolyn, this pertains to the metalloprotease ADAMTS7, and it is a novel locus associated with human coronary atherosclerosis. ADAMTS7 deletion protects against atherosclerosis and vascular restenosis in rodents. Carolyn, these authors led by Professor Wei Kong from Peking University designed three potential vaccines consisting of distinct B-cell epitopic peptides derived from ADAMTS7 and conjugated with the carrier protein KLH as well as aluminum hydroxide as an adjuvant. And they tested the efficacy of the vaccines to evaluate coronary intimal hyperplasia in mirroring wire models and after stent implantation in porcine models.
Dr. Carolyn Lam:
Oh, wow. So a vaccine against atherosclerosis? Cool.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
Yeah, it is really a vaccine concept against restenosis. Carolyn, this peptide vaccine against metalloproteinase ADAMTS7 efficiently mitigated atherosclerosis in vaccinated hyperlipidemic mice without lowering lipid levels and impeded intimal hyperplasia in both the murine wired injured arteries and the swine stented coronary arteries without any significant immune related organ injuries. Carolyn, the clinical implications are that the vaccine against the metalloproteinase ADAMTS7 is a novel atherosclerosis vaccine, mainly targeting vascular remodeling, thereby also alleviating ins

This week, please join author Amil Shah and Associate Editor Ntobeko Ntusi as they discuss the article "Stages of Valvular Heart Disease Among Older Adults in the Community: The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study."
Dr. Carolyn Lam:
Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. We're your co-hosts. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
And I'm Dr. Greg Hundley, associate editor, Director at the Pauley Heart Center at VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia.
Carolyn, this week's feature, very interesting. Many times in older individuals we understand how to manage severe valvular heart disease, for example, severe aortic stenosis. But do we really know how to manage individuals with mild valvular heart disease, for example, mild mitral regurgitation or aortic valve sclerosis?
Well, our feature today will address that issue. And so, listeners, grab a cup of coffee. We're going to go through some of the other articles in the issue first, and then we'll get to that really interesting, very practical feature discussion.
Well Carolyn, now that I've got my cup of coffee, this paper's from your group. And I'm going to ask you, Carolyn, as if it was a feature discussion, what was the background information that went into this and what was the hypothesis that you wanted to address?
Dr. Carolyn Lam:
Oh, it's great because it's at least not a Carolyn quiz, so I'm very happy to talk to you about it. Sex differences, as you know, it's a passion of mine.
And in response to heart failure pharmacotherapies, in particular, we know that there are sex differences, wherein women appear to benefit from newer hormonal modulators across a wider heart failure ejection fraction range compared to men. And this was particularly evident in the Paragon heart failure trial of Arne versus Valsartan.
However, whether these considerations also apply to the sodium-glucose Cotransporter 2 inhibitors or SGLT 2 inhibitors, remains unclear. So along with the groups from the DAPA-HF and DELIVER trial, we therefore examine and assess the impact of sex on the efficacy and safety of dapagliflozin in a pre-specified pooled analysis of these trials.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
Very interesting, Carolyn. So, differences between men and women and evaluation of efficacy of SGLT 2 inhibitors. So what did you find?
Dr. Carolyn Lam:
In essence, women and men derived similar benefits from dapagliflozin for both the primary outcome of worsening heart failure or cardiovascular death. And for secondary outcomes, including improvement in health status across the full spectrum of ejection fraction in heart failure.
Dapagliflozin was also safe and well tolerated in both sexes. So these findings are consistent with other SGLT 2 inhibitors and suggest a class effect. And in fact, this is very, very nicely discussed in an accompanying editorial by Dr. Ileana Piña.
Dr. Greg Hundley:
Ah, very nice, Carolyn. Well, my first study here comes from the world of preclinical science. And Carolyn, this study assesses the role of epsins in modulating endothelial to mesenchymal transition in atherosclerosis.
So Carolyn, you may ask what are epsins? Well, epsins are ubiquitously expressed adapter proteins involved in the regulation of endocytosis. And then Carolyn, there's a second process addressed in this study. And Carolyn, it is known that chronic vascular inflammation, a hallmark of atherosclerosis, induces a process called endothelial to mesenchymal transition.
And during endothelial to mesenchymal transition, the transition of non-smooth muscle cell-derived cells that are capable of maintaining indices of atherosclerotic lesion stability are lost. And this allows atherosclerosis to progress to a more advanced stage.
So Carolyn, in this study led by Dr. Hong Chen, from Boston Children's Hospital, the