Heart study uncovers differences between men and women
When it comes to differences between the sexes, scientists have gone right to the heart of the matter in new research.
Variations in the shape and texture of men’s and women’s hearts could explain why their risk of hear t disease differs, experts suggested.
Using a new hear t-specific image analysis “toolkit” called CMR radiomics on the organ’s left ventricle, scientists delved deeper to discover more subtle differences b et ween the genders and how these change with age.
In men, the heart muscle was dominated by more coarse textures, while women’s hearts had finer grained textures, researchers at Queen Mary University of London found, working in coll aboration with the University of Barcelona and University of Southampton.
Looking at the hear t structu re of 667 healthy people – 309 men and 358 women – from the UK Biobank Imaging study, they also found that men had a larger surface area of heart muscle, even after accounting for body size.
The organ’s shape and texture was also found to change as years go by, with participants categorised into the 45-54,55-64 and 65-74 age groups.
While differences in hear t shape between men and women decreased with age, texture differences remained across all age groups and dominated in older age, researchers said.
The British Hear t Foundation (BHF), which funded the research, said if used on people with diseases, such as those with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and coronary heart disease, it could reveal how the heart structure differs between cardiovascular health and disease.
The findings, presented at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress, have unearthed “buried treasure”, said B HF associate medical director Dr Sonya BabuNarayan.
She said: “CMR scans give us a wealth of information about the hear t, meaning that we can understand it to greater depths than ever before.
“But the researchers have dug even deeper to find buried treasure within this routine data, revealing subtler differences that vary more between men and women and by age than what we normally see.
“Next we need to find out if this technology can prove useful to assess cardiovascular risk in both women and men.”
Dr Zahra R aisi-estabragh, BHF clinical research training fellow at Queen Mary University of London, said: “Our ultimate goal is to use our imaging ‘toolkit’ to allow faster and more accurate diagnosis of heart disease.”