Cardiology faces a big challenge in improving patient outcomes after heart attacks. One important aspect of this is understanding the underlying disease processes and identifying patients who are at high risk of a poor outcome. Scientists from LMU University Hospital, Helmholtz Munich, and other research institutions have employed advanced biomedical and bioinformatics techniques to extensively chart the immune response to heart attacks in humans and have identified specific markers linked to the clinical progression of the disease.
data were published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine. Around 300,000 people in Germany suffer a heart attack every year, with many developing heart failure due to the heart muscle not recovering. Inflammatory reactions after an infarction were found to have a significant influence on the outcome, according to animal studies.The heart muscle’s functions can be restored, but an excessive or misdirected immune response could hinder this recovery, according to Dr. Kami Pekayvaz, the lead author of a new study and clinician scientist at the Department of Medicine I at LMU University Hospital, LMU Munich.
A team led by Dr. Pekayvaz, Viktoria Knottenberg, PD Dr. Leo Nicolai, and Prof. Konstantin Stark from the Medical Clinic I of the LMU Hospital Munich, along with Corinna Losert and Dr. Matthias Heinig from Helmholtz Munich, has conducted the first analysis of how the immune system responds to a heart attack in humans. The researchers studied the blood samples of patients who had experienced a heart attack.Patients treated at LMU Hospital experienced varying clinical outcomes.
Charting immune responses
Researchers analyzed the immune cells in the blood at a cellular level, focusing on their RNA expression profile. RNA is created when cells translate genetic information into proteins, and examining the transcriptome can provide insight into the current state and characteristics of a cell. Additionally, the blood plasma was assessed for various substances using protein analyses, which offer information on inflammatory and other processes. These analyses represent some of the most cutting-edge methods available, known as multi-o
MOFA, short for Multi-Omics Factor Analysis, is a specific bioinformatics technique that has been able to identify overarching patterns in the large amount of data collected. According to Dr. Matthias Heinig, who heads a bioinformatics working group at Helmholtz Munich, MOFA is particularly effective at recognizing and summarizing numerous smaller effects that are working together in the same direction. This method has enabled the creation of an atlas of immune responses following a heart attack. Additionally, Prof. Konstantin Stark, a Senior Consultant in Cardiology at the LMU Hospital, explains that these patterns can help to explain the differences in the clinical and temporal courses of patients. This breakthrough means that researchers are now able to gain a better understanding of the various immune responses that occur after a heart attack, ultimately leading to improved patient care.The study found that certain “immune signatures” may be linked to improved heart function recovery, while others may be associated with a poorer recovery. This research on the immune response to heart attacks is important for advancing basic cardiovascular studies and suggests that analyzing blood samples using multi-omics approaches could help predict the clinical outcomes of heart attack patients. However, the use of MOFA-based diagnostics for cardiovascular diseases needs further testing in future studies, which is what the Munich researchers plan to do in the years to come.
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