Cohort study of cardiovascular safety of different COVID-19 vaccination doses among 46 million adults in England

Publication: Nature Communications

Samantha Ip, Teri-Louise North, Fatemeh Torabi, Yangfan Li, Hoda Abbasizanjani, Ashley Akbari, Elsie Horne, Rachel Denholm, Spencer Keene, Spiros Denaxas, Amitava Banerjee, Kamlesh Khunti, Cathie Sudlow, William N. Whiteley, Jonathan A. C. Sterne, Angela M. Wood, Venexia Walker, the CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Consortium & the Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing COVID-19 National Core Study

31 July 2024

Summary

A new study has found heart attacks and strokes were lower after COVID-19 vaccination than before or without vaccination.

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Integration of polygenic and gut metagenomic risk prediction for common diseases

Publication: Nature aging

Yang Liu, Scott C. Ritchie, Shu Mei Teo, Matti O. Ruuskanen, Oleg Kambur, Qiyun Zhu, Jon Sanders, Yoshiki Vázquez-Baeza, Karin Verspoor, Pekka Jousilahti, Leo Lahti, Teemu Niiranen, Veikko Salomaa, Aki S. Havulinna, Rob Knight, Guillaume Méric & Michael Inouye

25 March 2024

Summary

Researchers have shown that risk scores based on our genes and gut bacteria can improve the prediction of diseases such as type 2 diabetes and prostate cancer over traditional risk factors alone.

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Impact of vaccination on the association of COVID-19 with cardiovascular diseases: An OpenSAFELY cohort study

Publication: Nature Communications

Genevieve I. Cezard, Rachel E. Denholm, Rochelle Knight, Yinghui Wei, Lucy Teece, Renin Toms, Harriet J. Forbes, Alex J. Walker, Louis Fisher, Jon Massey, Lisa E. M. Hopcroft, Elsie M. F. Horne, Kurt Taylor, Tom Palmer, Marwa Al Arab, Jose Ignacio Cuitun Coronado, Samantha H. Y. Ip, Simon Davy, Iain Dillingham, Sebastian Bacon, Amir Mehrkar, Caroline E. Morton, Felix Greaves, Catherine Hyams, George Davey Smith, John Macleod, Nishi Chaturvedi, Ben Goldacre, William N. Whiteley, Angela M. Wood, Jonathan A. C. Sterne & Venexia Walker On behalf of the Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing and Data and Connectivity UK COVID-19 National Core Studies, CONVALESCENCE study and the OpenSAFELY collaborative

11 March 2024

Summary

Researchers looked at cardiovascular diseases in different vaccination and variant eras using linked electronic health records for ~40% of the English population. They studied distinct groups: a ‘pre-vaccination’ cohort in the wild-type/Alpha variant eras and ‘vaccinated’ and ‘unvaccinated’ cohorts in the Delta variant era.

They showed that people with COVID-19 are more likely to develop cardiovascular diseases in the first 4 weeks after diagnosis compared to people without COVID-19. The effects can be long lasting. The excess risk of cardiovascular disease remains elevated up to 6 months after COVID-19 diagnosis but it reduces over time. People who had COVID-19 in the wild-type/Alpha variant eras (before vaccination became available to them) are at higher risk of cardiovascular events up to two years after COVID-19.

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A novel human iPSC model of COL4A1/A2 small vessel disease unveils a key pathogenic role of matrix metalloproteinases

Publication: Stem Cell Reports

Maha Al-Thani Mary Goodwin-Trotma Steven Bel Krushangi Pate Lauren K. Flemin Catheline Vilain, Marc Abramowicz, Stuart M. Allan, Tao Wang, M. Zameel Cader, Karen Horsburgh, Tom Van Agtmael, Sanjay Sinha, Hugh S. Markus, Alessandra Granata,

16 November 2023

Summary
Cambridge scientists have grown small blood vessel-like models in the lab and used them to show how damage to the scaffolding that support these vessels can cause them to leak, leading to conditions such as vascular dementia and stroke.

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Replacing device-measured sedentary time with physical activity is associated with lower risk of coronary heart disease regardless of genetic risk

Publication: Journal of Internal Medicine

Youngwon Kim, Haeyoon Jang, Mengyao Wang, Qiaoxin Shi, Tessa Strain, Stephen J Sharp, Shiu Lun Au Yeung, Shan Luo, Simon Griffin, Nicholas J. Wareham, Katrien Wijndaele, Soren Brage

23 August 2023

Summary

Excess sedentary time (ST) is recognized as an important modifiable risk factor for coronary heart disease (CHD). However, whether the associations of genetic susceptibility with CHD incidence can be modified by replacing wearable-device-measured ST with physical activity (PA) is unknown.

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Simultaneous identification of viruses and viral variants with programmable DNA nanobait

Publication: Nature Nanotechnology

Filip Bošković, Jinbo Zhu, Ran Tivony, Alexander Ohmann, Kaikai Chen, Mohammed F. Alawami, Milan Đorđević, Niklas Ermann, Joana Pereira Dias, Michael Fairhead, Mark Howarth, Stephen Baker, Ulrich F. Keyser

16 January 2023


Respiratory infections are the major cause of death from infectious disease worldwide. Multiplexed diagnostic approaches are essential as many respiratory viruses have indistinguishable symptoms.

We created self-assembled DNA nanobait that can simultaneously identify multiple short RNA targets. The nanobait approach relies on specific target selection via toehold-mediated strand displacement and rapid read-out via nanopore sensing. Here, we show this platform can concurrently identify several common respiratory viruses, detecting a panel of short targets of viral nucleic acids from multiple viruses.

Our nanobait can be easily reprogrammed to discriminate viral variants, as we demonstrated for several key SARS-CoV-2 variants with single-nucleotide resolution. Lastly, we show that nanobait discriminates between samples extracted from oropharyngeal swabs from negative and positive SARS-CoV-2 patients without pre-amplification.

Our system allows for multiplexed identification of native RNA molecules, providing a new scalable approach for diagnostics of multiple respiratory viruses in a single assay.

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Association of Collagen, Elastin, Glycosaminoglycans, and Macrophages With Tissue Ultimate Material Strength and Stretch in Human Thoracic Aortic Aneurysms: A Uniaxial Tension Study

Publication: J Biomech Eng.

Aziz Tokgoz,  Shuo Wang,  Priya Sastry,  Chang Sun, Nichola L. Figg,  Yuan Huang,  Martin R. Bennett, Sanjay Sinha, Jonathan H. Gillard, Michael P. F. Sutcliffe,  Zhongzhao Teng

25 April 2022


Summary

Fiber structures and pathological features, e.g., inflammation and glycosaminoglycan (GAG) deposition, are the primary determinants of aortic mechanical properties which are associated with the development of an aneurysm. This study is designed to quantify the association of tissue ultimate strength and extensibility with the structural percentage of different components, in particular, GAG, and local fiber orientation.

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Aortic stenosis post-COVID-19: a mathematical model on waiting lists and mortality

Publication: BMJ Open

Christian Philip Stickels, Ramesh Nadarajah, Chris P Gale, Houyuan Jiang, Kieran J Sharkey, Ben Gibbison, Nick Holliman, Sara Lombardo, Lars Schewe, Matteo Sommacal, Louise Sun, Jonathan Weir-McCall, Katherine Cheema, James H F Rudd, Mamas Mamas, Feryal Erhun

17 June 2022


Summary

An international team of researchers has modelled the impact that increasing treatment capacity and using a quicker, less invasive treatment option would have on waiting lists. Even in the best-case scenario, they found that the waiting list would take nearly a year to clear.

The traditional treatment for aortic stenosis involves replacing the narrowed valve, most commonly through open heart surgery (a surgical aortic valve replacement, SAVR). However, a newer keyhole procedure called a transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) is increasingly being used and is now recommended for patients aged 75 and over.

The researchers investigated the impact that increasing treatment capacity and converting a proportion of operations to the quicker TAVI procedure would have on the backlog. They looked at how long it would take to clear the backlog and found that the best and most achievable option involved a combination of increasing capacity by 20 per cent and converting 40 per cent of procedures from SAVR to TAVI. This would clear the backlog within 343 days with 784 deaths while people wait for treatment. Read the full story.

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Diagnosis of patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction in primary care: cohort study

Publication: ESC Heart Failure

Faye Forsyth, James Brimicombe, Joseph Cheriyan, Duncan Edwards, F. D. Richard Hobbs, Navazh Jalaludeen, Jonathan Mant, Mark Pilling, Rebekah Schiff, Clare J. Taylor,M. Justin Zaman, Christi Deaton

21 September 2021


Summary

This paper illustrates the challenges of finding patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) in primary care, and that many patients with likely HFpEF will not have their diagnosis confirmed. Greater awareness of HFpEF in primary care and improved diagnostic pathways are needed.

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Characteristics of patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction in primary care: a cross-sectional analysis

Publication: BJGP Open

Faye ForsythJames BrimicombeJoseph CheriyanDuncan EdwardsFD Richard HobbsNavazh JalaludeenJonathan MantMark PillingRebekah SchiffClare J TaylorM Justin ZamanChristi Deaton

14 December 2021


Summary

Compared with patients with other heart failure diagnoses in primary care, those with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) are more likely to be women, obese, prefrail/frail, more functionally impaired and report more symptoms.

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