Show notes
This week's episode includes author Allan Sniderman and Associate Editor Anand Rohatgi as they discuss the expected 30-year benefits of early versus delayed primary prevention of cardiovascular disease by lipid lowering and management. TRANSCRIPT: Dr Greg Hundley: Welcome everyone to this September 1 issue, as we start into the fall in North America, and I guess we're getting into spring-ish in the Southern hemisphere. Today, it's just myself, Dr Greg Hundley, Associate Editor and Director of the Pauley Heart Center at VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia. And, I'm so sad because my good friend, Carolyn, cannot be with us today. However, we have a great feature for the latter half of this recording and discussing some of the benefits of primary prevention using lipid lowering therapy to help prevent cardiovascular disease. But, before we get to that, let's grab a cup of coffee and let's go through some of the other articles in this issue. So, the first one is from the world of basic science and it's from Professor Eldad Tzahor, from the Weizmann Institute of Science. And, it's focusing on Agrin. So, this team previously reported that a fragment of the extracellular matrix protein, Agrin, promoted cardiac regeneration following myocardial infarction in adult mice. And, in this study the investigators propose to test the therapeutic potential of Agrin in a preclinical porcine model. They performed ischemia reperfusion injuries using balloon occlusion for 60 minutes, followed by either a 3, 7, or 28-day reperfusion period. They demonstrated that local antegrade delivery of recombinant human Agrin, or RH Agrin, to the infarcted pig heart can target the effected regions in an efficient and clinically relevant manner. In fact, a single dose of recombinant human Agrin improved heart function, reduced infarct size, reduced fibrosis and reduced adverse remodeling parameters, 28 days post myocardial infarction. Short-term myocardial infarction experiments, along with complementary mirroring studies, revealed myocardial protection, improved angiogenesis, inflammatory suppression, and cell cycle reentry as aggregation mechanisms of action. So in summary, this team demonstrated that a single dose of Agrin was capable of reducing ischemia reperfusion injury and improving heart function. Demonstrating that Agrin could serve as a therapy for patients with acute MI and potentially heart failure. So, this set the stage for future studies in human subjects. Okay. Well, our next paper is clinical and evaluates exposure to air pollution and particle radioactivity with a risk of ventricular arrhythmias. And, it comes to us from Ms. Ajani Peralta from Harvard University. Now, individuals are exposed to air pollution and ionizing radiation from natural sources through inhalation of particles. So, in this study, the team investigated the association between cardiac arrhythmias and short-term exposures to find particulate matter, PM 2.5, and particle radioactivity. So, ventricular arrhythmogenic events were identified among 176 patients with dual chamber implanted cardio defibrillators in Boston, Massachusetts, between the period of time of September 2006 and June 2010. And, patients were assigned exposures based on their residential addresses. So, what did they find? Well, in this high-risk population, those with these defibrillators, intermediate, 21-day parts per million, 2.5 exposure was associated with higher odds of a ventricular arrhythmia event onset among those with known cardiac disease and indication for ICD implantation. But this was independent of particle radioactivity. So, important information coming to us relating to air pollution and ionizing radiation in relation to ventricular events. Next, let's get back to another informative study from the world of basic science. And, this one involves genomic binding patterns of forkhead box protein 01 and how that is implicated in the development of cardiac hypertrophy. The study comes to us from Walter Koch from Temple University and their co-investigators. So, cardiac hypertrophic growth is mediated by changes in gene expression, as well as changes that underlie the increase in cardiomyocyte size. The former is regulated by ischemia reperfusion or loss, while the latter involves incremental increases in the transcriptional elongation activity of Pol II, that is preassembled at the transcription start site, or TSS. The differential regulation of these two distinct processes, by transcription factors, really hasn't been explored. So, this group sought to investigate the forkhead box protein, and we're going to call it FOX01, which is an insulin sensitive transcription factor that is regulated by hypertrophic stimuli in the heart. To date, however, the scope of its gene regulation is also somewhat uncertain. So, to address this, the investigators performed FOX01 chromatin immunoprecipitation deep sequencing, or ChIP-sequencing, in mouse hearts following seven-day isoproterenol injections, transverse aortic constriction, or vehicle injection by sham surgeries. The investigators found that FOX01 may mediate cardiac hypertrophic growth via regulation of Pol II de novo recruitment and pause release. As the latter represents the majority, or almost 59% of FOX01 bound Pol II regulated genes following pressure overload. So, in conclusion, these findings demonstrate the breadth of transcriptional regulation by FOX01 during cardiac hypertrophy, which is important information that should be valuable for future therapeutic targeting. Moving on from basic science and coming back into the world of clinical science. And, this next paper is from Professor Sripal Bangalore from New York University School of Medicine. And, it involves routine revascularization versus initial medical therapy in those with stable ischemic heart disease. So, coronary arterial revascularization is often performed, as we know, in patients with stable ischemic heart disease. And, these authors conducted a PubMed Embase central search for randomized trials, comparing routine revascularization versus an initial conservative strategy in patients with stable ischemic heart disease. The primary outcome was death, and secondary outcomes included cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, heart failure, stroke, unstable angina, and freedom from angina. And, the trials were stratified by percent stent use, and by percent statin use, to evaluate the outcomes across all of these trials. So, 14 randomized clinical trials that enrolled 14,877 patients followed up for a weighted mean of 4.5 years with a total of 64,678 patient years of follow-up, were used for the study. Most of the trials enrolled patients with preserved left ventricular systolic function, low symptom burden, and they excluded patients with left main coronary artery disease. So, here are the results, revascularization compared with medical therapy alone, was not associated with a reduced risk of death. The trial sequential analysis showed that the cumulative Z curve crossed the futility boundary indicating firm evidence for lack of a 10% or greater reduction in death. Now, revascularization was associated with a reduced non-procedural MI rate, but also with an increased procedural MI rate with, therefore, no overall difference in myocardial infarction incidents. So, another point in this study is that there was a significant reduction in unstable angina and increase in freedom from angina was observed in those that underwent revascularization. Finally, there were no treatment related differences in the risk of heart failure or stroke. So in conclusion, in patients with stable ischemic heart disease, routine revascularization was not associated with improved survival, but was associated with a lower risk of non-procedural myocardial infarction, and unstable angina with greater freedom from angina at the expense of higher rates of peri procedural myocardial infarction. Now, longer term follow-up of trials is needed to assess whether the reduction in these non-fatal spontaneous events actually improves long-term survival. Well, listeners what else is in the issue? Now, we refer to this as what's in the mailbox? So, we have a research letter from Jianyi Zhang regarding the apical resection prolongs the cell cycle activity and promotes myocardial regeneration, after left ventricular injury, in the neonatal pit. We have another research letter from Roger Foo, assigning distal genomic enhancers to cardiac disease-causing genes. What else is in the issue? There's a nice, On My Mind piece, from Anthony Wierzbicki on phenomics, not genomics, for cardiovascular risk assessment. And, there's a Perspective piece from Dr Dana Gal, regarding considerations for triaging elective cases in children with cardiac disease in a time of crisis. Finally, we have an exchange of letters from Dr Daxin Wang and Dr Prabhakara Nagareddy regarding the previously published article, "Neutrophil Derived S100A8/A9 Amplification of Granulopoieses After Myocardial Infarction." There's a very nice case series regarding an unusual reversible cause of acute high output heart failure complicated by refractory shock from Dr Matthew Durstenfeld. And then, finally, we have an ECG challenge from Mr. Alejandro Cruz-Utrilla, regarding giant T-wave inversion and dyspnea in the time of this coronavirus pandemic. Well, listeners, what a great issue. And now, we get to look forward to that feature discussion from Dr Allan Sniderman, regarding the benefits of early versus delayed primary prevention by lipid lowering therapy. Well, listeners, now we get to move to our feature discussion today and understand a little bit more about lipid management. And, with us, we have Dr Allan Sniderman from McGill University, and our own associate editor, Dr Anand Rohatgi from University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. Allan, we're going to start with you. Can you give us a little bit of information pertaining to the background, or the hypothesis? Why did you want to perform this particular study? Dr Allan Sniderman: Let us start from where we are in cardiovascular prevention now, which is the risk model. All of the major guidelines, throughout the world, select candidates for statin prevention based on their risk of a cardiovascular event over the next 10 years. Well, that's been a very positive development, but we need to appreciate what the limitations are. Because, tenure risk is so heavily based on age, what it boils down to is that if you're 60 and over, and a male you're going to be eligible. An increasing proportion of women will be eligible as they're older. But, if you're younger, regardless of your other causal factors, you may well not be eligible. And, the net result of that is, almost 50% of all cardiovascular events occur before 60, 65. So, half of the events are occurring before prevention even kicks in. The second point is that you can't get be at risk until you have disease within your arterial tree. So, what we've done is, we're trying to prevent the disease that's already present. So, although it's been a wonderful step forward, we think it's time to start moving beyond that model, and trying to prevent disease itself, rather than preventing people who've already had disease. So, what we decided to do, which we're shifting focus here from risk to causes. Risk, after all, is a consequence of causes. And, when you look at the pathology of atherosclerosis, with a few exceptions such as FH, up until the age of 30, 35, you don't have the complex lesions that can actually cause clinical events. So, we said, "Okay, we'll start at that time point. And, we'll try and quantitate the benefit of earlier intervention, versus later intervention, at different starting points." So, we based our analysis on NHANES, and we identified the people within the NHANES cohort, who would not have been eligible for prevention, based on the current American guidelines. So, we had three age starting categories, 30 to 39, 40 to 49, and 50 to 59. And, we followed them out for 30 years. Our analysis has the same duration of the follow up, but the same final date. That has to be kept in mind because it limits the total benefit on the early starters. And, we further sub divided the groups based on non-HDL cholesterol, into those who had a level above 160, those who had an intermediate level, and those who had a low level because we'd previously shown that non-HDL identifies a high-risk group over 20 to 30 years. We decided we'd look at two different models of the likelihood of the drug preventing events. One is the standard estimates that you would get from the statin clinical trials. But, if you reduce LDL cholesterol by a milli mol of 40 milligrams percent of your language, you reduce risk by about 22%. And, that's our conservative model. Then we took a model that's more biological and based on Mendelian randomization because, as you know, the Mendelian randomization analysis, the benefit, the reduction and event rate per milligram, per deciliter, lower LDL cholesterol is two or three fold greater than in the statin clinical trials. So, Brian Friends had produced a formula in which you blend those two together, the statin estimate and the Mendelian randomization and it varies depending on how early you start. And, that was a more optimistic model, obviously. But the major point I emphasize is that both models showed that if you start early, you do better. Now, how surprising is that? But the benefit depended on the level of non-HDL cholesterol. So starting at age 30, 35 in somebody who has a normal or low non-HDL cholesterol, doesn't really gain you all that much. Starting with somebody who has a high level, different story. In each of the categories, the conservative model, if you did the full 30-year prevention, you get a third to a half reduction in events. And, with the more optimistic model, you get half to two thirds reduction. The closer you get to where you'd start with the guidelines, you're losing that benefit. Then you say, "Okay, well, how optimistic is the optimistic model?" And, all the optimistic model is saying, "Let's remember how we get disease." If we stop the formation of a new lesion, well, that's perfect prevention. Well, we're doing it, present is trying to stabilize existing lesions. The older we get, the more disease we have, the less new lesion we have, the less potential for the big game in prevention. So stopping new lesion formation, it seems to me is from clinical reasoning, a pretty biologically and clinically coherent way to formulate what your prevention strategy should be. What we think we contributed, what we hope we've contributed with this analysis is saying, "Let's take a real step back, let's look at what we're doing and let's see how can we make a Magnus step forward in prevention?" And, the way we think you can do it is to start moving away from exclusively a risk paradigm, because that made sense. You want to treat people who were at risk. We get away from this 10-year duration and start focusing more on the causes, because when we look at an individual, we can measure the causes. Well, we talked about risks, that's a much slipperier concept, because it's a group. Is everybody in the group the same risk? They're clearly not. So, to try and get this to a much more concrete level, that's what we tried to do. Dr Greg Hundley: Very nice, Allen. And so, Anand, why did you select pushing this paper forward? And, what do you think this means for patients with high cholesterols? They're in their 40s and 50s. Help expand on some of what Allan has, so elegantly, described for us. Anand R…
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