Researchers take a fresh look at how different risk factors impact the look of a patient's heart
Researchers have used radiomics to evaluate how different risk factors for heart disease can affect a person's heart, sharing their findings in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine.
The study included cardiac MRI scans of nearly 30,000 patients from the UK Biobank database. Fifty-one percent of the patients were women, and the median patient age was 63.3 years of age.
Overall, the team found that male sex, age, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking are all risk factors for heart disease associated with making changes to the structure and appearance of the heart.
“Our findings provide new insights into the impact of risk factors on the heart and identify differences in the size, structure, and appearance of hearts between healthy men and women,” lead author Zahra Raisi-Estabragh, a clinical lecturer in cardiology at Queen Mary University London, said in a press release. “The study forms part of our wider research program aimed at developing the radiomics imaging toolkit to transform patient care. Our novel approach has the potential to provide faster, more accurate diagnosis of heart disease, improve our estimations of future risk of heart conditions and better understand the processes underlying cardiovascular disease.”
All key risk factors included in the analysis appeared to make the heart muscle darker in appearance and give it a smoother texture. Men tended to have larger hearts, with the heart muscle appearing smoother and less texturally complex than it does for women. However, the heart muscle in healthy women was brighter than a healthy man's heart and had a more complex appearance.
The team is looking at whether these observed changes in heart muscle translate to a higher risk of having significant heart problems, such as myocardial infarctions.
“As we’ve shown that these changes are associated with known major risk factors for heart disease, it’s very likely that they represent unhealthy changes to the heart muscle," Raisi-Estabragh said. "However, more research is needed to confirm this."
Read the full study here.