AFFAIRS OF THE HEART
Dr Nikki Earle, the inaugural (2021) John Burton Heart Research Award winner, described her work on improving outcomes for people living with heart disease. Nikki has a background in genetics and is a member of the Heart Health Research group in the UoA Department of Medicine. Her study, commenced in 2015, looks at patients with first time heart attacks and is aimed at reducing inequities in the treatment provided. There are 9 hospitals involved, across NZ.She talked about the way genes do not determine our fate – healthy lifestyles do make a difference. Effective medications – the science of pharmacogenomics – can be tailored to suit individual profiles.
The 2022 winner of the award is Dr Ana Sayegh. Ana will be refining her ability to record sympathetic activity in humans with high blood pressure. It’s a single unit (meaning one nerve fibre) recording which allows definitive analyses beyond what she has been able to do to date. She will go to one of the best labs in the world and also learn the latest software skills to analyse these data allowing her to correlate nerve activity with blood pressure directly.
Professor Julian Paton, Co-Director of the Centre, then outlined the history of the identification of blood pressure. He described how our blood vessels are covered in sympathetic nerves, connected to the automatic part of our brains. These nerves can become overactive. The Centre’s investigation of the treatment of hypertension is looking not only at the carotid body in the carotid artery, working with this, but also a naturally occurring kiwi compound to lower blood pressure. This latter treatment could be a world first for NZ – watch this space!He then gave us fascinating glimpses of three other exciting new developments
- A new “natural” pacemaker, imitating the body’s heart rhythms, being trialled next year
- A needle-free injector for the treatment of rheumatic fever and heart disease
With the aid of 3-D bio-printing, the growing of new heart valves