BioHEART is a study of people with, or at risk for, heart disease. The BioHEART Biobank seeks to improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiovascular disease through state-of-the-art scientific analyses of blood samples, imaging studies, and health data.
What is the issue for NSW?
One Australian suffers a heart attack every 10 minutes, and often without any warning. Heart attacks are usually caused by atherosclerosis in the coronary arteries. This is a build-up of cholesterol, with associated inflammation. The plaque can become unstable, rupturing its contents, and causing a sudden blood clot that can precipitate cardiac arrest.
For the last 50 years, we’ve known that high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and smoking are the main drivers for heart disease in our community. However, up to 27% of people presenting to our centre with heart attacks have none of these risk factors, and are left asking, “Why me?”.
What does the research aim to do and how?
This grant will leverage a previously awarded Biospecimen grant, focused on stable patients who were clinically suspected of having coronary artery disease and who were referred for a CT coronary angiogram (CTCA) and not suspected of having an acute coronary syndrome. Whilst this previously awarded Biospecimen grant will continue to collect data on patients with suspected stable coronary artery disease presenting for a clinically indicated CTCA, the newly awarded Biospecimen grant will allow BioHEART to contribute biosamples on a complementary cohort presenting with a life-threatening myocardial infarction (BioHEART-MI). The complementary nature of BioHEART-CT and BioHEART-MI biospecimens, in addition to detailed imaging and clinical data, will enhance the value of the resource for researchers in NSW and beyond. The resource and the anonymized data will be valuable for a broad range of researchers in NSW and beyond.