ORANGE : Medical Center Gets Heart-Study Grant
In what may be the largest research project of its kind, UCI Medical Center has received a $1.3-million federal grant to study whether ultrasound exams can detect early signs of heart disease in young adults.
UCI cardiologist Julius Gardin, the study’s principal investigator, said he hopes the five-year project will show whether echocardiograms can find subtle changes in the heart that indicate a high risk of heart disease.
Of particular interest, he said, are changes in the heart tissue of young adults who smoke, are overweight, have a risk of high blood pressure or have a family history of cardiovascular disease.
“We may then be able to advise patients early on, even before symptoms occur, about how to prevent further heart damage,” Gardin said. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, Gardin is working with technicians at the university hospital’s computerized Echocardiographic Reading Center to analyze the results of ultrasound tests of the hearts being performed on 4,000 adults of ages 18 to 38.
The exams are not being conducted at UCI, however; they began recently at four other sites--Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and the University of Alabama in Birmingham.
About a year ago Gardin received a related $1.9-million NIH grant to study risk factors for coronary artery disease in older adults, ages 65 to 84. He is studying 5,000 echocardiographs in that effort, medical center spokeswoman Fran Tardiff said.
Gardin said he hoped the results from both projects will give doctors a sense of the natural history of coronary heart disease, telling them roughly how long it takes for people with early signs of a problem to develop heart disease or stroke.
An echocardiogram is a painless, ultrasound exam of the heart in which high-frequency sound waves bounced off the heart and surrounding tissue are used to depict valves inside the heart.
Coronary artery disease claims more than 500,000 Americans each year--more lives than any other disease, according to the American Heart Assn.
