Characterizing Life-course Myocardial Mechanics in Black and White men and women from the Bogalusa Heart Study
Description: Cardiovascular (CV) diseases (CVD) are the primary cause of death and a key source of health disparities in the United States between Blacks and Whites, men and women. Particularly among African Americans, low-income, and rural groups in the South, CVD health disparities are disproportionately larger. Yet very few epidemiologic studies have prospectively collected longitudinal data from childhood to adulthood, and even fewer have such data on African-Americans and socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. Commonly, overt CVD is identified decades after the initial onset of the underlying cardiac pathophysiological process. Autopsy studies, including the Bogalusa Heart Study (BHS), have provided irrefutable evidence that subclinical atherosclerotic disease begins in childhood. All these findings highlight the importance of early detection of cardiac functional abnormalities. The importance of echocardiographic studies of cardiac structure and function in the assessment of vascular risk has been well established and left ventricular (LV) global longitudinal strain (LVGLS) derived from speckle tracking echocardiography has emerged as a more sensitive and superior parameter than cardiac metrics from conventional echocardiography, such as LV ejection fraction. The BHS cohort is unique among epidemiologic studies in the US and an ideal setting having CV risk factor data, prospectively collected on black (35%) and white (65%) individuals over 5 decades from childhood to midlife in black and white men and women. Hence, we will leverage our rich trove of existing imaging by measuring LVGLS to characterize myocardial mechanics over the lifespan to investigate the association of child & adolescent CV risk profiles with LVGLS measured in young adulthood in black & white, men & women. Furthermore, we will investigate the association of LVGLS in young adulthood with subclinical measures of CVD and risk of events in midlife among black & white, men & women. By addressing these two specific objectives, we aim to identify novel insights into the earliest changes in myocardial mechanics that contribute to CV risk and clinical events in later life, as well as whether these associations vary by race and sex. In our cohort, these images correspond to early adolescence and young adulthood, and so represent a cost-effective and rare opportunity to obtain repeated longitudinal measures of myocardial mechanics from late adolescence to midlife in a community-based population.
Funder: American Heart Association
Amount: $147,300
Funding type: fellowship
Funder scheme: Postdoctoral Fellowship
Start date: 2024-01-01
End date: 2025-12-31
Investigators: XUANYI JIN, XUANYI JIN
Institution: Tulane University Health Sciences Center
Funded outputs count: 0
Funder award ID: 24POST1242342
OpenAlex ID: G341685264