Grants to improve cardiovascular outcomes

University of Adelaide leaders in heart health have received extra support for their research from the Heart Foundation through its annual funding round.

Dr Jonathan Ariyaratnam and Professor Peter Psaltis, both of the Adelaide Medical School, have been recognised for their innovation, leadership and talent in cardiovascular research,

Dr Ariyaratnam, also Research Leader within the Centre for Heart Rhythm Disorders, received $171,200 through the Postdoctoral Fellowship program for his project on treating subclinical heart failure. He also received another $20,000 through the Paul Korner Award, which recognises the positive work of the two most innovative male fellows.

"Atrial fibrillation (AF) remains the most common cardiac arrhythmia in Australia and worldwide," says Dr Ariyaratnam.

"Despite rapid advances in treatment of AF in recent years, its prevalence and associated healthcare costs continue to grow exponentially.

"I have previously shown that almost three-quarters of patients with AF demonstrate coexistent subclinical heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) based on invasive measurements of cardiac pressures.

"Despite the absence of overt features of clinical heart failure, patients with AF and subclinical HFpEF demonstrate worse exercise capacity, higher symptom burden and poorer quality of life.

"The presence of subclinical HFpEF in patients with AF is hugely under-recognised by clinicians and potentially offers a novel target for treatment in patients with AF.

"The aim of my fellowship program is to investigate whether the treatment of patients with AF can be improved by targeting subclinical HFpEF."

Professor Psaltis received just over $149,000 through the Foundation's Vanguard Grant program, which aims to provide funding to test the feasibility of innovative concepts, to research the impact of clonal haematopoiesis on atherosclerotic coronary artery disease after myocardial infarction.

"This project will address an important knowledge gap by studying whether clonal haematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) mutations, even at low quantities, lead to more aggressive growth of coronary plaques after heart attack," says Professor Psaltis.

"To do this in a timely and cost-efficient manner, we will use blood samples from an ongoing study of 300 patients in whom we are tracking residual plaque growth over the first year after heart attack by repeat imaging with photon-counting coronary computed tomography angiography.

"Supported by this grant, we will perform CHIP gene sequencing from blood DNA to detect and measure CHIP mutations, along with other blood-based measurements of inflammation.

"Our results will inform if, and how, CHIP associates with plaque progression and uncontrolled inflammation after heart attack to help explain why it is linked to worse outcomes.

"This could provide impetus for future trials to test whether new treatments such as anti-inflammatory drugs can prevent plaque progression in patients with CHIP and pave the way for CHIP testing in clinical practice to identify people at higher risk after heart attack who would benefit from more personalised, targeted therapies to improve outcomes."