Publications by authors named "Krishna G Aragam"

Article Synopsis
  • * A large study involving nearly 10,000 DCM cases and close to a million controls identified 70 significant genetic locations linked to the disease, revealing the importance of heart muscle cells in its development.
  • * The research also indicates that factors like higher body weight and blood pressure may contribute to DCM, and genetic risk scores can help predict the condition across different populations.
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  • Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a major cause of heart failure, and this study analyzes genetic factors by examining 14,256 DCM cases and 36,203 participants from the UK Biobank for related traits.
  • Researchers discovered 80 genomic risk loci and pinpointed 62 potential effector genes tied to DCM, including some linked to rare variants.
  • The study uses advanced transcriptomics to explore how cellular functions contribute to DCM, showing that polygenic scores can help predict the disease in the general population and emphasize the importance of genetic testing and development of precise treatments.
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  • The study explores how sitting for long periods (sedentary behavior) can increase the risk of heart-related issues like atrial fibrillation and heart failure.
  • Researchers analyzed data from over 89,000 participants using accelerometers to measure daily sedentary time and its impact on cardiovascular health.
  • Results indicated that those sitting more than 10.6 hours a day faced significantly higher risks for heart failure and cardiovascular death, and moving more (even a little) could help reduce these risks.
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Large-scale sequencing has enabled unparalleled opportunities to investigate the role of rare coding variation in human phenotypic variability. Here, we present a pan-ancestry analysis of sequencing data from three large biobanks, including the All of Us research program. Using mixed-effects models, we performed gene-based rare variant testing for 601 diseases across 748,879 individuals, including 155,236 with ancestry dissimilar to European.

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Heart failure (HF) is a complex trait, influenced by environmental and genetic factors, which affects over 30 million individuals worldwide. Historically, the genetics of HF have been studied in Mendelian forms of disease, where rare genetic variants have been linked to familial cardiomyopathies. More recently, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have successfully identified common genetic variants associated with risk of HF.

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  • Identifying individuals at high risk of coronary artery disease (CAD) before its onset is essential for public health, and a new polygenic score (GPS) has been developed to enhance this risk stratification using large genetic data sets across multiple ancestries.
  • The GPS shows a strong association with both existing and future CAD events, effectively identifying high-risk individuals and improving risk assessment compared to previous scores.
  • Validation across diverse ethnic groups highlights the GPS's ability to predict CAD risk more accurately than earlier methods, illustrating the benefits of incorporating broad genetic data for better health outcomes.
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  • A genome-wide association study (GWAS) was conducted on thoracic aortic aneurysms and dissections (TAAD) involving nearly 450,000 participants, identifying 21 genetic risk loci, 17 of which are new findings.
  • The study utilized various analytical methods to pinpoint specific genes and cell types linked to TAAD, reinforcing that it is a unique condition not caused by the usual vascular disease factors.
  • The research highlights that the genetic basis of TAAD is complex, similar to other traits, and is not only influenced by significant protein-altering gene variants.
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  • * A large study identified 16 genetic risk factors for SCAD, highlighting potential genes involved in blood vessel function and the physical structure of arteries.
  • * Some genetic variants linked to SCAD show opposing effects on CAD, suggesting that while both diseases share certain biological links, they operate through different pathways; high blood pressure was also found to possibly contribute to SCAD risk.
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Left ventricular mass is a risk marker for cardiovascular events, and may indicate an underlying cardiomyopathy. Cardiac magnetic resonance is the gold-standard for left ventricular mass estimation, but is challenging to obtain at scale. Here, we use deep learning to enable genome-wide association study of cardiac magnetic resonance-derived left ventricular mass indexed to body surface area within 43,230 UK Biobank participants.

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Importance: The clinical utility of polygenic risk scores (PRS) for coronary artery disease (CAD) has not yet been established.

Objective: To investigate the ability of a CAD PRS to potentially guide statin initiation in primary prevention after accounting for age and clinical risk.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This was a longitudinal cohort study with enrollment starting on January 1, 2006, and ending on December 31, 2010, with data updated to mid-2021, using data from the UK Biobank, a long-term population study of UK citizens.

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  • - Heart failure is a major cause of heart-related health issues, and this study uncovers genetic risk factors by analyzing data from a large, diverse group of participants (over 115,000 with heart failure and 1.55 million controls) to find 47 genetic risk locations.
  • - The research integrates heart failure with cardiac imaging data, identifying an additional 61 risk loci and validating new candidate genes that might contribute to cardiomyopathy by examining gene expression in heart tissue.
  • - The study suggests that specific genes and proteins (like BCKDHA and certain amino acids) play critical roles in heart failure and could lead to new treatment approaches by highlighting potential targets for therapy.
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  • The study aims to identify genetic factors linked to ideal cardiovascular health (CVH) and their relation to cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes using data from the Veteran Administration Million Veteran Program.
  • An ideal health score (IHS) was calculated from clinical factors like blood pressure and cholesterol, and behavioral factors like smoking and physical activity, and analyzed through genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and a polygenic risk score (PRSIHS).
  • Results showed that only 4.2% of participants had ideal CVH, but higher PRSIHS scores were linked to lower odds of CVD outcomes and mortality, indicating that certain genetic variants significantly influence CVH in this diverse group of US Veterans.
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Importance: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a leading cause of sudden cardiac death in young people. Although rare genetic variants are well-established contributors to HCM risk, common genetic variants have recently been implicated in disease pathogenesis.

Objective: To assess the contributions of rare and common genetic variation to risk of HCM in the general population.

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Importance: Pathogenic variants associated with inherited cardiomyopathy are recognized as important and clinically actionable when identified, leading some clinicians to recommend population-wide genomic screening.

Objective: To determine the prevalence and clinical importance of pathogenic variants associated with inherited cardiomyopathy within the context of contemporary clinical care.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This was a genetic association study of participants in Atherosclerosis in Risk Communities (ARIC), recruited from 1987 to 1989, with median follow-up of 27 years, and the UK Biobank, recruited from 2006 to 2010, with median follow-up of 10 years.

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Importance: Observational studies have consistently proposed cardiovascular benefits associated with light alcohol consumption, while recent genetic analyses (ie, mendelian randomization studies) have suggested a possible causal link between alcohol intake and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. However, traditional approaches to genetic epidemiology assume a linear association and thus have not fully evaluated dose-response estimates of risk across different levels of alcohol intake.

Objectives: To assess the association of habitual alcohol intake with cardiovascular disease risk and to evaluate the direction and relative magnitude of cardiovascular risk associated with different amounts of alcohol consumption.

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Importance: Familial hypercholesterolemia variants impair clearance of cholesterol from the circulation and increase risk of coronary artery disease (CAD). The extent to which adherence to a healthy lifestyle is associated with a lower risk of CAD in carriers and noncarriers of variants warrants further study.

Objective: To assess the association of the interaction between familial hypercholesterolemia variants and adherence to a healthy lifestyle with risk of CAD.

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Cardiometabolic diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. Despite a known genetic component, our understanding of these diseases remains incomplete. Here, we analyzed the contribution of rare variants to 57 diseases and 26 cardiometabolic traits, using data from 200,337 UK Biobank participants with whole-exome sequencing.

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