scholarly journals Imaging Quality Control, Methodology Harmonization and Clinical Data Management in Stress Echo 2030

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (14) ◽  
pp. 3020
Author(s):  
Ylenia Bartolacelli ◽  
Andrea Barbieri ◽  
Francesco Antonini-Canterin ◽  
Mauro Pepi ◽  
Ines Monte ◽  
...  

Stress echo (SE) 2030 study is an international, prospective, multicenter cohort study that will include >10,000 patients from ≥20 centers from ≥10 countries. It represents the logical and chronological continuation of the SE 2020 study, which developed, validated, and disseminated the “ABCDE protocol” of SE, more suitable than conventional SE to describe the complex vulnerabilities of the contemporary patient within and beyond coronary artery disease. SE2030 was started with a recruitment plan from 2021 to 2025 (and follow-up to 2030) with 12 subprojects (ranging from coronary artery disease to valvular and post-COVID-19 patients). With these features, the study poses particular challenges on quality control assurance, methodological harmonization, and data management. One of the significant upgrades of SE2030 compared to SE2020 was developing and implementing a Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap)-based infrastructure for interactive and entirely web-based data management to integrate and optimize reproducible clinical research data. The purposes of our paper were: first, to describe the methodology used for quality control of imaging data, and second, to present the informatic infrastructure developed on RedCap platform for data entry, storage, and management in a large-scale multicenter study.

Author(s):  
Minxian Wang ◽  
Vivian S. Lee-Kim ◽  
Deepak S. Atri ◽  
Nadine H. Elowe ◽  
John Yu ◽  
...  

Background: Corin is a protease expressed in cardiomyocytes that plays a key role in salt handling and intravascular volume homeostasis via activation of natriuretic peptides. It is unknown if Corin loss-of-function (LOF) is causally associated with risk of coronary artery disease (CAD). Methods: We analyzed all coding CORIN variants in an Italian case-control study of CAD. We functionally tested all 64 rare missense mutations in Western Blot and Mass Spectroscopy assays for proatrial natriuretic peptide cleavage. An expanded rare variant association analysis for Corin LOF mutations was conducted in whole exome sequencing data from 37 799 CAD cases and 212 184 controls. Results: We observed LOF variants in CORIN in 8 of 1803 (0.4%) CAD cases versus 0 of 1725 controls ( P , 0.007). Of 64 rare missense variants profiled, 21 (33%) demonstrated <30% of wild-type activity and were deemed damaging in the 2 functional assays for Corin activity. In a rare variant association study that aggregated rare LOF and functionally validated damaging missense variants from the Italian study, we observed no association with CAD—21 of 1803 CAD cases versus 12 of 1725 controls with adjusted odds ratio of 1.61 ([95% CI, 0.79–3.29]; P =0.17). In the expanded sequencing dataset, there was no relationship between rare LOF variants with CAD was also observed (odds ratio, 1.15 [95% CI, 0.89–1.49]; P =0.30). Consistent with the genetic analysis, we observed no relationship between circulating Corin concentrations with incident CAD events among 4744 participants of a prospective cohort study—sex-stratified hazard ratio per SD increment of 0.96 ([95% CI, 0.87–1.07], P =0.48). Conclusions: Functional testing of missense mutations improved the accuracy of rare variant association analysis. Despite compelling pathophysiology and a preliminary observation suggesting association, we observed no relationship between rare damaging variants in CORIN or circulating Corin concentrations with risk of CAD.


Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Phillips ◽  
Leslee J. Shaw

This chapter focuses on the economic data available for cardiovascular (CV) imaging. The total costs of testing are substantively lower than those associated with invasive procedures. There are several ongoing randomized trials, such as the PROMISE trial, that may further add to our evidence base on the cost implications of CV imaging. Data for stress nuclear cardiology supports its utility in terms of a high prognostic accuracy and that this test is economically attractive; notably for patients with a high likelihood of coronary artery disease. Data also supports that this benefit does not only include patients with known coronary artery disease but also the high likelihood subsets of the elderly or functionally impaired where ischemic findings play a fundamental role in ischemia-guided management. Importantly, more recent data support that alternative testing strategies have reduced cost in subsets of patients including lower risk women with stable chest pain and in the acute evaluation of low risk chest pain in the ED. Negative evidence is extremely important for the field of CV imaging and this more recent data should be embraced as defining our limitations in nuclear cardiology.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 417-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akihiro Nomura ◽  
Connor A. Emdin ◽  
Hong Hee Won ◽  
Gina M. Peloso ◽  
Pradeep Natarajan ◽  
...  

Background: Familial sitosterolemia is a rare Mendelian disorder characterized by hyperabsorption and decreased biliary excretion of dietary sterols. Affected individuals typically have complete genetic deficiency—homozygous loss-of-function (LoF) variants—in the ABCG5 or ABCG8 genes and have substantially elevated plasma sitosterol and LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol (LDL-C) levels. The impact of partial genetic deficiency of ABCG5 or ABCG8 —as occurs in heterozygous carriers of LoF variants—on LDL-C and risk of coronary artery disease (CAD) has remained uncertain. Methods: We first recruited 9 sitosterolemia families, identified causative LoF variants in ABCG5 or ABCG8 , and evaluated the associations of these ABCG5 or ABCG8 LoF variants with plasma phytosterols and lipid levels. We next assessed for LoF variants in ABCG5 or ABCG8 in CAD cases (n=29 321) versus controls (n=357 326). We tested the association of rare LoF variants in ABCG5 or ABCG8 with blood lipids and risk for CAD. Rare LoF variants were defined as protein-truncating variants with minor allele frequency <0.1% in ABCG5 or ABCG8 . Results: In sitosterolemia families, 7 pedigrees harbored causative LoF variants in ABCG5 and 2 pedigrees in ABCG8 . Homozygous LoF variants in either ABCG5 or ABCG8 led to marked elevations in sitosterol and LDL-C. Of those sitosterolemia families, heterozygous carriers of ABCG5 LoF variants exhibited increased sitosterol and LDL-C levels compared with noncarriers. Within large-scale CAD case-control cohorts, prevalence of rare LoF variants in ABCG5 and in ABCG8 was ≈0.1% each. ABCG5 heterozygous LoF variant carriers had significantly elevated LDL-C levels (25 mg/dL [95% CI, 14–35]; P =1.1×10 −6 ) and were at 2-fold increased risk of CAD (odds ratio, 2.06 [95% CI, 1.27–3.35]; P =0.004). By contrast, ABCG8 heterozygous LoF carrier status was not associated with increased LDL-C or risk of CAD. Conclusions: Although familial sitosterolemia is traditionally considered as a recessive disorder, we observed that heterozygous carriers of an LoF variant in ABCG5 had significantly increased sitosterol and LDL-C levels and a 2-fold increase in risk of CAD.


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