Podcasts about empa reg outcome

In the sequel to last week's episode, we are back with Dr. Jonathan Davis, Director of the Heart Failure program from San Francisco General. We continue our tour of GDMT for HF, by covering SGLT2-i, MRAs, as well as some AKI and outpatient considerations. This is part 1 of 2 parts which will cover an overview of GDMT medications, and dive into Beta-blockers and ARNIs. Part 2 to come out next week! | 00.33 - Previously on Booster Shots | | 01.31 - Chapter 3: SGLT2-i | The now famous EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial [NEJM 2015] Empagliflozin in HFpEF (not discussed in this episode [NEJM 2021] | 04.24 - Chapter 4: MRAs | RALES trial demonstrating benefit in Morbidity/Mortality [NEJM 1999] | 10.04 - Organizing follow up | | 11.51 - Issues with AKI | | 15.10 - Some fun questions about Fun questions | | 16.54 - Summary of All The Things! | [The appearance of external hyperlinks does not constitute endorsements by UCSF of the linked websites, or the information, products, or services contained therein. UCSF does not exercise any editorial control over the information found therein, nor does UCSF make any representation of their accuracy or completeness. All information contained in this episode are the opinions of the respective speakers and not necessarily the views their respective institutions or UCSF, and is only provided for information purposes, not to diagnose or treat.] Music by Amit Apte. Medical Heart Vectors by Vecteezy

Following the last episode focusing on GLP-1 RAs, we are now turning to SLGT2 inhibitors. Which patients would benefit most from an SGLT2 inhibitor, and who should we avoid offering one? To help answer these questions, we're joined by Dr Kevin Fernando, GP Partner and Scottish Lead for the UK Primary Care Diabetes Society. For more free education, visit the DKIP website, follow us on Twitter (@dkipractice) or connect on LinkedIn. Funding statement: This independent educational activity is supported by an educational grant from Eli Lilly, Merck Sharp and Dohme Corp. and Novo Nordisk A/S. The educational content has been developed by Liberum IME in conjunction with an independent steering committee; the financial supporters have had no influence on the content of this education. Disclosures: Dr Kevin Fernando declares the following: Advisory Board Member - Lilly, Napp, Boehringer Ingelheim Speaker Honorarium - Lilly, Napp, Boehringer Ingelheim References: - Zinman B et al. N Engl J Med. 2015;373(22):2117-2128 [EMPA-REG OUTCOME]. - Neal B et al. N Engl J Med. 2017;377(7):644-657 [CANVAS]. - Wiviott SD et al. N Engl J Med. 2019;380(4):347-357 [DECLARE-TIMI 58]. - Cannon CP et al. N Engl J Med. 2020 Oct 8;383(15):1425-1435 [VERTIS-CV]. - Perkovic V et al. N Engl J Med. 2019;380(24):2295-2306 [CREDENCE]. - McGuire D et al. JAMA Cardiol. 2021; 6(2): 1–11 [CVOT meta-analysis]. - Heerspink H et al. N Engl J Med. 2020 Oct 8;383(15):1436-1446 [DAPA-CKD]. - Packer M et al. N Engl J Med. 2020 Oct 8;383(15):1413-1424 [EMPEROR-Reduced]. Funding statement: This independent educational activity is supported by an educational grant from Eli Lilly, Merck Sharp and Dohme Corp., and Novo Nordisk A/S. The educational content has been developed by Liberum IME in conjunction with an independent steering committee; the financial supporters have had no influence on the content of this education.

SGLT2 inhibitors are the new drugs which have been approved for heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF). After the landmark EMPA-REG_OUTCOME, DECLARE TIMI 58, EMPEROR REDUCED and DAPA HF trials, empagliflozin and dapagliflozin have found a place in the management of HFrEF or heart failure. Lets discover what makes them special drugs in heart failure.

With Eberhard Standl, Helmholtz Centre - Germany & Anna Norhammar, Karolinska Institutet - Sweden. Link to paper

In this special episode of the View, Dr. Deepak Bhatt and Prof. Philippe Gabriel Steg discuss Day 1 of ESC Congress 2019, including objective risk assessment versus standard care for acute coronary syndromes (AGRIS); the relationship between hypoglycemia, cardiovascular outcomes, and empagliflozin treatment (EMPA-REG OUTCOME); and maximum-fixed energy versus low-escalating energy shocks for cardioversion of atrial fibrillation (CHESS).

Dr Gregory Hundley:       Welcome everyone to the June 18th edition of Circulation on the Run. I am Dr Greg Hundley, Professor of Internal Medicine and Director of the Pauley Heart Center at VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia.                                                 In today's issue we're deviating from our common format due to some scheduling difficulties. So, rather than our traditional coffee chat in this program I'm going to have a large gulp of coffee and present results from several exciting papers. Then we'll turn over the second half of our program to Dr Carolyn Lam for our feature discussion.                                                 Now, I promise this is a one-time deviation and we will return to our common chat format in early July. But, before I launch into my presentations I did want to introduce what will transpire with Carolyn. She will be discussing an exciting paper from the Adelaide Medical School at the University of Adelaide in Australia.                                                 Some have wondered whether the persistence of a patent arterial venous fistula post-kidney transplant may contribute to ongoing maladaptive cardiovascular remodeling. To address this issue Carolyn will be discussing with authors whether ligation of this AV fistula may reverse this maladaptive remodeling. And like you, I'm excited to listen to that discussion. But before that let me review several of the other distinctive papers on this issue.                                                 The first one is entitled “Individual Treatment Effect Estimation of Two Doses of Dabigatran on Stroke and Major Bleeding in Atrial Fibrillation.” They are the results from the RE-LY trial. The corresponding author is Professor Frank Visseren from the University Medical Center of Utrecht in Utrecht University.                                                 The study emanates from the randomized evaluation of long-term anticoagulation therapy or the RE-LY trial. In which high dose dabigatran, that's 150 milligrams twice daily, was found more effective in prevention of ischemic stroke and systemic embolism than low dose dabigatran which is 110 milligrams twice daily.                                                 But this occurred at that expense of an increased risk of gastrointestinal bleeds. Importantly however, the absolute treatment effect of dabigatran in both doses, likely differs between individuals. And therefore, individual treatment effect estimation has the potential to identify patients who have a favorable trade off and absolute benefit and harm from dabigatran compared with no treatment, and to select the optimal dose for each individual patient.                                                 So in this study, the investigative team derived and validated a prediction model for ischemic stroke and systemic embolism and major bleeding in patients with atrial fibrillation from three treatment arms of the RE-LY study. They had 11,955 individuals in the derivation cohort and 6,158 in the validation cohort. And they evaluated the patient characteristics of sex, age, smoking, anti-platelet drugs, prior vascular disease, diabetes, blood pressure, estimated glomerular filtration rate, and hemoglobin. Dr Gregory Hundley:       Well, what were the results? Well the five-year absolute risk reduction, for ischemic stroke and systemic embolus minus the five-year absolute risk increase for major bleeding, when comparing the high to the low dose of dabigatran yielded a net benefit in 46% of patients. And therefore, the authors conclude that the absolute treatment benefits and harms of dabigatran in atrial fibrillation can be estimated based on readily available patient characteristics.                                                 And perhaps down the road such treatment effect estimations can be used for shared decision making before starting dabigatran treatment and to determine its optimal dose of administration. Well, how 'bout that? And let's go on to the second paper entitled “Empagliflozin and the Risk of Heart Failure Hospitalization in Routine Clinical Care: A First Analysis from the Empagliflozin Comparative Effectiveness and Safety, or EMPRISE Study.                                                 And the corresponding author for this study is Elisabetta Patorno from Brigham and Women's Hospital in the Harvard Medical School. So, as a background in a different study to this, the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial showed that Empagliflozin an SGLT2 inhibitor was found to reduce the risk of hospitalization for heart failure by 35% on top of standard of care in patients with Type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular disease.                                                 Well, the current study, The Empagliflozin Comparative Effective and Safety or EMPRISE Study was designed to assess empagliflozin's effectiveness, safety, and health care utilization in routine care from the period of time between August of 2014 through September of 2019. And the author's report on the first interim analysis in which they investigated the risk of hospitalization for heart failure among Type 2 diabetic patients initiating empagliflozin vs. sitagliptin.                                                 The investigators used two commercial and one federal Medicare claims data source from the U.S. and identified a one-to-one propensity score matched cohort of 16,443 pairs of Type 2 diabetes patients that were greater than 18 years of age initiating empagliflozin or sitagliptin. The average age of the participants was approximately 59 years.                                                 And almost 54% of the participants were males and approximately 25% had records of existing cardiovascular disease. So compared to sitagliptin the initiation of empagliflozin decreased the hospitalization for heart failure risk by 50% over a mean follow-up of 5.3 months. And the results were consistent in patients with and without baseline cardiovascular disease for both the empagliflozin 10 milligram or 25 milligram daily dose. Or analysis comparing empagliflozin vs. dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor class all comers.                                                 Thus, in conclusion, in this first interim analysis from EMPRISE, the investigative team showed that compared with sitagliptin the initiation of empagliflozin was associated with a decreased risk of hospitalization for heart failure among patients with Type 2 diabetes as treated in routine care with and without a history of cardiovascular disease. Dr Gregory Hundley:       Well, now we're going to turn our attention to red meat. And this next study was entitled, The Consumption of Meat, Fish, Dairy Products, Eggs, and Risk of Ischemic Heart Disease. It's a Perspective study of 7,198 incident cases among 409,885 participants in the Pan European Epic Cohort. And the corresponding author is Professor Timothy Key from The University of Oxford.                                                 Some of the background here, met analysis of previous prospective studies have suggested that intake of processed meat maybe associated with a higher risk of ischemia heart disease whereas, unprocessed red meat might not. For dairy products and eggs, systematic reviews of prospective studies have reported no consistent evidence that higher intakes are associated with a higher risk of ischemic heart disease.                                                 Other studies have shown that fatty fish consumption may reduce the risk of ischemic heart disease, it is a rich source of long chain N3 fatty acids. And meta-analysis has suggested even an inverse association between overall fish consumption and mortality from ischemic heart disease.                                                 So, hear in this cohort: we're going to evaluate all of these. Accordingly Key, and his co-authors report the relationships of these foods with risk of ischemic heart disease in the European prospective investigation into cancer and nutrition, the EPIC study, and that again is a cohort of a half million men and women from nine European countries followed for 12 years to examine the association between the intake of animal foods and the occurrence of ischemic heart disease.                                                 The author's found that higher consumption of red, unprocessed and processed meat was positively associated with the risk of ischemic heart disease. None of the other animal foods examined were positively associated with this risk. And intakes of fatty fish, yogurt, cheese and eggs were modestly, inversely associated with the risk.                                                 In addition, the red and processed meat were associated with plasma non-HDL cholesterol and systolic blood pressure. And this finding is of interest as possibly these other variables could serve as mediator of the association between red or processed meat and future ischemic heart disease. It is important to note that while these results are of interest to those concerned with the future adverse cardiovascular effects related to the consumption of red meat, one cannot infer causality and other studies would need to be designed to address causal relationships.                                                 The last paper that I'm going to present during the coffee gulp, emanates from the basic science arena. And it is entitled The “Shear-Induced CCN1 Promotion of Atheroprone Endothelial Phenotypes and Arthrosclerosis. And the corresponding author is Dr Fan-E Mo from the National Cheng Kung University College of Medicine. Dr Gregory Hundley:       The matricellular protein CCN1 has been implicated in arthrosclerosis based on its expression in arterial segments with evidence of arthrosclerosis. And this study evaluated the relationship between sheer stress, both laminar and oscillatory at the site of atherosclerotic liaisons and molecular markers of pathophysiologic process involved in the progression of arthrosclerosis.                                                 The authors found that sheer induced CCN1 and its receptor integrin, alpha six, beta one, instigate atheroprone phenotypic changes in endothelial cells via activating NF kappa beta. Because the activation of NF kappa beta further up regulates the expression of CCN1, alpha six, and beta one, atheroprone flow creates a positive feedback to sustain atherogenesis.                                                 In addition, disrupting CCN1, alpha 6 beta one engagement by a specific CCN1 mutation, or by a peptide antagonist unhindered atherogenesis in mice. So what are the clinical implications of these findings? That's something Carolyn would ask me. Well, it appears that CCN1 alpha 6 beta one engagement represents a novel therapeutic target for arthrosclerosis.                                                 These data demonstrate a causative role of CCN1 in atherosclerosis via modulating endothelial phenotypes. And CCN1 binds to its receptor integrin alpha 6 beta one to activate NF kappa beta, thereby instigating a vicious cycle to persistently promote atherogenesis. Perhaps in the future T1 me medics may further be optimized to treat arthrosclerosis.                                                 Well everyone, that concludes the first portion of this June 18 edition of Circulation on the Run and now it's time to move on to Carolyn's discussion of our featured paper. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Cardiovascular disease remains the major cause of death in kidney transplant recipients. And today's featured paper has important implications for the management of this cardiovascular risk following kidney transplantation. I'm so excited to be discussing it, and I'm going to let the corresponding author Dr Toby Coates from Royal Adelaide Hospital tell us all about it, and so happy to also welcome our editorialist Dr Patrick Mark from University of Glasgow.                                                 Toby, could you please tell us what inspired you to do this remarkable study? Dr Toby Coates:                We're very interested in obviously our patients surviving as long as they possible can after kidney transplantation. And we noticed that many of them having had a successful kidney transplant, still had functioning AV fistulas. Now of course the AV fistula, is a connection between the artery and the vein that enabled us to access the circulation after hemodialysis. Which around the world is probably the most, is the most common form of dialysis practice performed.                                                 So many of these patients sustained 20 years down the track after successful transplants still had these very large functioning left to right shunts, on the basis of their dialysis history. So we had a couple of patients who developed quite severe cardiac failure and we noticed that when we ligated the AV fistula, their back got dramatically better.                                                 So, as a consequence of that, we went to look at the ligature and we couldn't find any randomized control trial that told us what the best thing was to do, post-transplant with these fistulas. So we decided that what we would do be use the state of the art cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, or cardiac MRI to assist the cardiac function with myocardium thickness in our patients and then randomize a group of stable transplant patients to ligation or not.                                                 And then follow that up with cardiac MRI six months down the track to see what happened. And so that was the basis of the study that we performed. The first randomized controlled trial of the effect of ligation of the AV fistula on the left ventricular mass, that was the prominent one for trial. Dr Carolyn Lam:                You know, Toby, just to let you know right there, I thought it was so incredibly novel. So I'm a heart failure specialist and we know that shunts are associated with high output cardiac failure, and yet, I personally had never questioned this, so I thought this is incredibly novel and it's important. But please, tell us all about the results. Dr Toby Coates:                We were delighted to say that there was a very significant reduction in the left ventricle mass. In fact, the main decrease was 22.1 grams compared to the control arm in whom the cardiac mass actually went up 1.2 grams. So, then we mobilized the body surface area, the reduction of the left ventricular mass index dropped by 11.8 grams per metered square.                                                 Now, this is quite remarkable for me doing the study because I've never seen an intervention, I've never seen an intervention where every single patient improved with the ligation, every single patient there was an improvement in the cardiac parameters. Never seen anything like it in the pre and post of the ventricular mass it really came down. So that was quite remarkable.                                                 And the second thing that really impressed me at the time, was the improvement in the BMP's, and we measured the brain maturated peptide, and being a methodologist that's clearly something that's of interest to us and we saw a substantial reduction. It's statistically significant reduction in BMP as well.                                                 The patient themselves, some of them recorded quite significant improvement in exercise tolerance afterwards. And we had, as I mentioned before in a couple of patients, not in the study but outside of the study, subsequently when they're presented with profound right heart failure, the ligation of the AV fistula made a huge difference to them symptomatically.                                                 So that was sort of confirming all of the things that we thought along the way. Pleasingly we didn't see any change in kidney function. So, we were concerned that there might have been on the basis of some non-controlled studies in the past, that there might have been a deterioration in the estimated glomerular filtration rate, or eGFR. We didn't see that.                                                 And we didn't see any significant change in the blood pressure either. Which is some of us have previously reported. Closing the fistula itself, is a very trivial procedure. It's usually done as an outpatient, so a day procedure. So it's not resulting in coming to the hospital. And the only complications, really were lots of local redness and some pain, potentially from the fistula where in the ligated.                                                 So, we thought this was remarkable. An outpatient procedure that could significantly reduce the left ventricular mass by 22.1 grams over the six month period that was associated with minimal side effects and complications. And when you think about that, that's sort of equivalent really to taking an anti-hypertensive medication for six months. That magnitude of reduction with ventricular mass which clearly from the patient's point of view is much preferable to adding more medication to an already over-burdened tablet loading in your patients with kidney transplants. So we were very pleased with that result altogether. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Thank you Toby, and we in turn were very pleased to be publishing this in Circulation. Likewise, Patty, if I may, I love your editorial. First, let me tell everybody who's listening out there. Go pick up the editorial and look at the figure. It is so cool. It shows pros and cons of arterial venous fistula ligation in these patients. But could you please share some thoughts Patty? I mean you covered the perspective just so well. Patrick Marks:                   I must give the credit to my co-author who actually drew the figure himself. So Chris Eaves rather myself. We were really impressed with the study and we're really delighted to write an editorial for it. It's just one of those studies that I have to say, you know, you kick yourself and you wish you'd done it. With all the world of observational data showing that creation of a fistula appears to be associated with an increase in LV mass obstruction by echo and angio and bicartic MR in smalls studies.                                                 But it's taken a long stat to move from that to actually doing a randomized control of ligating the fistula in people with you know, stable functioning transplants. We were really, really impressed with Toby and his team for undertaking this study. And until we'd gone through the results, they're really very impressive.                                                 The magnitude of reduction LV mass is very impressive and also the changing BMP was really nice to see. One of my comments of the study were, was interesting because as methodologists we are aware of the idea arteriovenous fistula as being the axis for dialysis. And we sometimes feel uncomfortable by ligating this because we know if the transplant was to fail, how much patients need a functioning fistula. And that's the one thing I'm still curious, like and I still offered some comments in the editorial were, that while there's doubt that the cardiovascular benefits demonstrated by Toby's study are really very impressive.                                                 I wondered about the implications out with the study came down the line, you know would there be some of these patients whose kidney transplant function would decline? And there may be regret of losing the access. We mentioned there is some inconvenience, it is an operative procedure to loosen the fistula. So there are some things to think about in the study, but overall, I can't help saying just how impressed I am that they managed to do this trial in a proper randomized, controlled trial form. It's really, really impressive in using the cardiac MR endpoint is it seems quite a secure way of assessing this. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Those are great points, Patty. Toby, any response to that. Dr Toby Coates:                Look it's really very interesting as a transplant pathologist for the last 20 years, one of the biggest, I guess it's a bit of a misconception. When a fistula has been present for 10 or 15 years and still there to come back and try and reuse it for dialysis access after that period of time, in my experience anyway, also very difficult to reuse those fistulas and the surgeons end up having to create a new one anyway.                                                 They frequently become quite aneurismal, they get very large and unsightly and the volume of the shunt is significant and often we find that as an access they don't work as well. So I personally don't have a huge concern about closing them. Now I agree with you, these patients were stable, longstanding and we assessed that the risk is, we need to go back onto hemodialysis was small.                                                 But you are absolutely right, I mean, it is possible that something could have come out of the blue and maybe a patient would be disappointed that that access that they'd had for so many years was no longer available. So that is, the caveat on the study, but thankfully so far out, some of these patients five or six years down the track, we haven't had anybody need to go back on dialysis, so it's been good. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Yeah, it really says to me as well, that patient selection is important exactly like you emphasized, and you, in the editorial Patty. But from a cardiology standpoint, too, are there plans to perhaps do studies with hard, clinical endpoints? What do you think are the next steps? Maybe I'll let Toby go first, then Patty. Dr Toby Coates:                We think now with this study done, the next thing is to have a larger study with significant cardiovascular endpoints. Which I obviously would be cardiac failure and acute coronary events. So the two things that would seem in my mind, and I think that needs to be multi-centered, preferable international if we can.                                                 And one of the really positive things about the highlight from the American Heart Association is that we've had people reach out to us from France and all around the globe saying that they'd be interested in participating, you know in a multi-centered trial. So, I think that's what we need to do, and clearly you don't it’ll have to be a constant endpoint, or not. I'd be interested in Patty's thoughts about that, right if you had some guidelines and some suggestions.                                                 And then obviously would be randomized, controlled trial looking at those hard endpoints with probably some sidearms doing cardiac MRI as well, and potentially more heart functioning tests. So yes, I think this is just the beginning, we do need a hard endpoint trial to really nail this completely. Patrick Marks:                   Yeah, I'll just come in there and just come on to that Toby. I completely concur with what you said. I think there's been quite a provocative editorial a few years back, and suggesting that while there's lots of studies in chronic kidney disease, end stage renal disease, kidney transplant patients avoid LV mass, really it hasn't yet been translated into actually leading studies in the integration of LV mass and end stage renal failure haven't really yet translated into mortality benefits.                                                 And I think we need to move to a bigger study. It's really beautiful that you've been able to demonstrate LV mass falls naturally with ligation. And it's impressive that it just happens so consistently across your population in the intervention arm. But we need to move on to a longer trial with hard clinical endpoints. Certainly heart failure, certainly cardiovascular mortality, [be]cause there's plenty of reasons to believe that producing LV mass in these patients might have benefit both for heart failure, whether that's heart failure, heart injection fraction, or whatever, I'll leave that to Carolyn's judgment to help us with that.                                                 But also, if we can reduce LV mass and then we may be able to reduce arrhythmia burden which again is when these things we worry about in end stage renal disease, again, your answer for that is, that in addition to the heart endpoints you should be able to also add in some patient afforded outcomes in a larger study. Or something like an exercise tolerance quota of quality of life.                                                 All this has started has journey from the surrogate endpoint of left ventricular mass into a bigger outcome study and I can't wait to see how you get on with it. Dr Carolyn Lam:                I can't wait either. And I'm sure the audience is sharing all our enthusiasm as well. Thank you so much Toby and Patty. I really learned so much. You heard it right here on Circulation on the Run. Thank you for joining us this week. Don't forget to turn in again next week.                                                 This program is copyright American Heart Association 2019.  

Dr Carolyn Lam:                Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. We're your co-hosts. I'm Dr Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore. Dr Greg Hundley:             And I'm Greg Hundley, associate editor and director of the Pauley Heart Center at VCU Health, in Richmond, Virginia. Dr Carolyn Lam:                So Greg, are ARNI's now going to be used for functional, mitral regurgitation and heart failure? Well, we're going to be chatting all about that with our feature paper, coming right up after these summaries.                                                 Greg, you've got a biggie to start with, haven't you? Dr Greg Hundley:             Oh yes, Carolyn, I'm really excited about this paper. The senior author Wanpen Vongpatanasin from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and looking at high phosphate diets and their relationship to exercise intolerance. I really felt this was an exceptional study and combining that key that we have, for basic science papers and translation, where we're looking at data from both human and basic science, in both in a single manuscript.                                                 So, this study focuses on inorganic phosphates and they are present in 40-70 percent of the foods, really as a preservative enhancer, in western diets. We see it in colas, meats, dry food mixes, bakery products.                                                 For the human subject component of this study, the investigators examine the relationship between physical inactivity, assessed with ActiGraphs that were worn, and serum phosphate levels. They also obtained MRI measures of cardiac function and participants were recruited from the Dallas Heart Study too.                                                 In animals, they looked at the direct effects of dietary, inorganic phosphate on exercise capacity, oxygen uptake, serum non-esterified fatty acids, and glucose was measured during exercise treadmill tests in mice fed either high inorganic phosphate diets or normal in-organic phosphate diets. And they were on that for 12 weeks.                                                 To determine the direct effect of phosphate on muscle metabolism and expression of genes involved in fatty acid metabolism, additional studies in the differentiated myotubes were conducted after subjecting those cells to media with high or low phosphate conditions. Dr Carolyn Lam:                So, what did the study show? Dr Greg Hundley:             In the human part, among 1603 participants, higher serum in-organic phosphate was independently associated with reduced time spent in moderate to vigorous physical activity and increased sedentary time. And interestingly, there was no association between serum phosphate levels and left ventricular ejection fraction or volumes.                                                 In the animal studies, mechanistic insight was obtained. Compared to controlled diets, consumption of high phosphate diet for 12 weeks did not alter body weight or left ventricular function, thereby confirming what we saw in the human subjects, but reduced maximal oxygen uptake, treadmill duration, spontaneous locomotor activity, fat oxidation, fatty acid levels, and led to down-regulations of genes involved in fatty acid synthesis.                                                 So, the take-home on this is that the results of this study demonstrate a detrimental effect of dietary, phosphate excess on skeletal muscle, fatty acid metabolism, and exercise capacity, which is independent of obesity and cardiac contractile function.                                                 And as such, dietary in-organic phosphate may represent a novel and modifiable target to reduce physical inactivity associated with the western diet. I think, Carolyn, we're going to see a large number of epidemiologic studies that are going to really look at this as something we might be able to modify in our diet to help impact some of these sedentary lifestyles and the harmful cardiovascular effects that we find associated with that lifestyle. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Yikes. Remind me again, so phosphates in colas, meats, dried food mixes, and bakery products and so on, the preservative. Wow, you're right; big paper. Dr Greg Hundley:             It's amazing. It's in 40-70 percent of the food products here in the United States. So, wow. Something really striking. So Carolyn, how about one of the papers that you liked? Dr Carolyn Lam:                Moving to related cardio metabolic disease, we know that patients with type 2 diabetes and prevalent atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, there is a tenfold variation in future cardiovascular risk in these patients. The current paper actually analyzes data from EMPA-REG OUTCOME where the authors, led by David Fitchett from St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, sought to investigate whether the beneficial effects of Empagliflozin, observed in the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial, varied across the spectrum of baseline, cardiovascular risk.                                                 What they found was that in patients with type 2 diabetes and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, the relative reductions in risk of cardiovascular death, all-cause mortality, 3-point MACE, and heart failure hospitalizations with Empagliflozin versus placebo, were consistent in patients with and without a prior, myocardial infarction, with and without a prior stroke, and across sub-groups by the 10-point TIMI Risk Score for secondary prevention at baseline. Dr Greg Hundley:             Does this suggest, Carolyn, that we use these inhibitors in all patients with type 2 diabetes? Dr Carolyn Lam:                Remember the EMPA-REG OUTCOME; all patients had established atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. This paper really adds to the understanding of the gradient of risk within these patients who had atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and says Empagliflozin could be beneficial. But remember, there are patients with type 2 diabetes without established, cardiovascular disease and I think there's still equipoise in this primary prevention population. Dr Greg Hundley:             That was great, Carolyn. Now I'm going to grab another sip of coffee and go onto my next paper. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Sure, as long as it's not cola. No phosphates. Dr Greg Hundley:             Right, thank you very much, Carolyn. I'm going to talk about screening for small and medium abdominal aortic aneurysms. This particular study comes from the surveillance of the National Health Service screening program by Dr Earnshaw. Basically, population screening for abdominal, aortic aneurysms has been shown to reduce AAA-related mortality by up to 50%. Most men who screen positive have a AAA below 5.5 centimeters in diameter, and that's really our current referral threshold for treatment. When they have smaller diameter aneurysms they're entered into an ultrasound surveillance program.                                                 In this study, the investigators looked and reviewed those that had small, 3-4.4 centimeter diameter aneurysms or medium ,4.5 up to 5.4 centimeter aneurysms, and they were followed. They were looking at the risk of rupture in these under surveillance.                                                 They had a total of 18,652 men and the risk of rupture overall per annum was 0.03% for men with small, abdominal aortic aneurysms and 0.28% for medium size. That was just below the threshold for the 5-5.4 centimeters, which was 0.4% over time. The risk of abdominal aortic aneurysm surveillance is below .5% per year and that is just below our current referral threshold for surgery, which is 5.5 centimeters.                                                 This is a study that really confirms, Carolyn, that the target mark or diameter that we've selected is appropriate. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Nice. These just confirm the current guidelines? Dr Greg Hundley:             Yeah, they do and Gil Upchurch from University of Florida, a surgeon, had a very nice editorial. The point he wants to make is yep, diameter of 5.5 is the threshold, but a couple key points. As patients are coming in for these visits, we need to continue to emphasize to them other factors related to growth of abdominal aortic aneurysms and their rupture. So, tobacco cessation, treatment of your lipids, management of your hypertension.                                                 The other point that he makes, is we really don't need to be operating on those individuals with an abdominal aortic aneurysm diameter of less than 5.5 centimeters. He makes an argument here that's in some countries with fee-for-service reimbursement, up to 30% of AAA repairs are for aneurysms less than this diameter of 5.5 centimeters. This over utilization of resources can add considerable costs to the healthcare system for managing this condition and is unlikely to increase the overall survival of these patients.                                                 A nice study confirming that what we're doing, really in terms of size and diameter, is correct, but also emphasizing this patient population often has a lot of other cardiovascular co-morbidities that we need to aggressively manage. How about your next paper? Dr Carolyn Lam:                From one very clinically, applicable paper to another. This one answers the question, what's the optimal duration of emergency department and post-emergency department rhythm monitoring among patients with syncope. And the authors, led by Dr Thiruganasambandamoorthy and his colleagues from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, prospectively studied adults presenting within 24 hours of syncope at six emergency departments. They collected baseline characteristics, the time of syncope, the time of emergency department arrival, and the Canadian Syncope Risk Score, risk category. They followed subjects for 30 days and adjudicated the primary outcome, which was serious arrhythmic conditions and that includes arrhythmias or interventions for arrhythmias and unexplained death.                                                 Their results showed that the overall arrhythmia risk, and the risk after two hours of emergency department arrival from Canadian Syncope Risk Score, low-risk patients, was indeed very low. Similarly, the overall risk and after six hours of emergency department arrival for medium and high-risk patients was moderate and high, respectively. No low-risk patients suffered ventricular arrhythmia or unexplained death and most of the arrhythmias among the non-low-risk patients occurred within 15 days of the index syncope. Dr Greg Hundley:             Carolyn, what's the take home message here? Dr Carolyn Lam:                The results really support brief monitoring in the emergency department for two hours for Canadian Syncope Risk Score low-risk patients, and six hours for medium and high risk patients followed by selective admissions and the results also support a 15-day outpatient monitoring for medium-risk patients at a selected threshold and for all high-risk patients. So very practical advice. Dr Greg Hundley:             Very good. Until next week, I'm going to watch out for phosphates. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Indeed, and let's go on now to our featured discussion.                                                 For today's featured paper, we are discussing the results of the PRIME Study and that is Angiotensin Receptor Neprilysin Inhibitor, or ARNIs, for functional mitral regurgitation. A terribly interesting study. So pleased to have with us an author Dr Sung-Hee Shin from Inha University Medical center in Incheon, Korea as well as our associate editor Dr Victoria Delgado from University of Leiden in the Netherlands.                                                 Sung-Hee, what an interesting study. ARNI or Entresto for functional mitral regurgitation. Could you tell us what inspired this study and what did you find? Dr Sung-Hee Shin:            Our study was the designed to tell if ARNI or functional mitral regurgitation because secondary functional mitral regurgitation was developed as a result of a reduced function. Guideline-directed medical therapy for heart failure would be a mainstay for a therapy.                                                 But despite use of the traditional drugs such as BETA blocker, ACE inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blockers, you know that the functional mitral regurgitation may be common and significant in the person having this functional mitral regurgitation would be related to increased morbidity and mortality.                                                 So, that trial showed that trans-catheter mitral valve repair effectively reduced the function mitral patient and resulted in lower rate of heart related mortality among patients with heart failure and function mitral regurgitation.                                                 In our blind trial, we also tried to tell whether an ARNI is more effective in improving function mitral regurgitation and randomly assigned 118 patients with heart failure and chronic secondary function mitral regurgitation lasting more than six months despite medical therapy and ejection fraction between 25% and 50% to receive either sacubitril/valsartan or valsartan in addition to standard medical therapy for heart failure.                                                 What happened with that change of mitral regurgitation after 12 months which was assessed by means of transthoracic area ways echo. What we observed was that transthoracic area as well as the volume of mitral regurgitation saw a decrease much more effective in the sacubitril/valsartan group than valsartan group.                                                 We also looked at the various other measures of the left ventricle remodeling and showed that the valsartan group had smaller left ventricle volume at 12 months and had a greater reduction of end-diastolic volume index.                                                 Also, among the completers ARNI, for the reduced left ventricle volume and the yearly time than the control group. So, what we think is that these factors might contribute to greater reduction of function mitral regurgitation in patients in the sacubitril/valsartan group.                                                 But our study was a mechanism study, but it was not designed to see outcomes. So further research and data would be necessary to check is this transthoracic echo end point can translate into better outcome in this population. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Sung-Hee, this is just so interesting to have hypothesized this about functional mitral regurgitation. And not only that, I mean, to my mind, this is the largest echo-based studies of patients before and after Entresto that I can think of. It's nice to know, on top of knowing in paradigm that we can improve outcomes in heart failure reduced ejection fraction, that we now can look at the heart and see what happens in so many dimensions.                                                 So, congratulations.                                                 Victoria, were you surprised by these results? And do you agree with the mechanisms that Sung-Hee suggested? Dr Victoria Delgado:        I think that this study is very important because in the field of functional mitral regurgitation, there is still a lack of consensus on how to treat these patients, which are very challenging.                                                 If the patient needs revascularization they will be referred for certain. But it still should be CBR mitral regurgitation and moderate and mile mitral regurgitation are not considered.                                                 I think that we discuss often which is the optimal medical therapy or the guidelines based medical therapy but it's not really consensus because the studies before have not been like this one. That large in order to answer a specifically that question.                                                 I think that this article brings an important message and brings more evidence to our field that there is not that much data. So, I think it's very important for that research, in particularly after the research of the co-op and the mitral trial where it seems that the selection of patients is very important in order to identify the patients that will really benefit from those therapies. Dr Carolyn Lam:                That's such a good point. Going to that selection of patients, Sung-He, you mentioned very carefully the ejection fractions that you allowed up to 50% in these patients. Could you explain how you reasoned the selection of this patient cohort? Dr Sung-Hee Shin:            The reason why we chose the patients we did, the range of ejection fraction condition, was that we thought the reversibility of the left ventricle mortality and function mitral regurgitation might be more pronounced in these patients.                                                 When we considered the fraction condition in mitral regurgitation with ejection fraction used under [inaudible 00:18:17] LV dysfunction, our inclusive criteria of ejection fraction between 25 to 50% might correspond to ejection fraction of 20 to 40% in patients with mitral regurgitation.                                                 We concluded that if a patient had ejection fraction less than 25% because the reversibility of mortality and function mitral regurgitation might be smaller when all the LV dilation is too extreme and advanced heart failure is already established.                                                 So, I just thing how it can be provided to the patient who have functional mitral regurgitation associated with too extreme LV dilation and LV ejection fraction too. Dr Victoria Delgado:        I think, Carolyn, it's a very good point what she explained because we are used to select patients based on ejection fraction, in particularly patients with functional mitral regurgitation, ejection fraction is rather misleading because actually it's just a change of volume in the ventricles emptying in a low pressure chamber which is the left atrium.                                                 The moment that you correct that in mitral regurgitation sometimes then you face, or you see, the true ejection fraction of that ventricle. And if we wait too long, we may end up with ventricles that they don't have any more resource in order to improve ejection fraction after repair of the mitral valve.                                                 So, I think that this study is important to also realize that concept. That ejection fraction in patients with functional mitral regurgitation may not be the most accurate parameter to assess the function of that ventricle. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Yeah. Exactly. And I thought that was a very clever part of the design. I'm glad you explained it and also so glad, Victoria, you invited the editorial by Dr Mullens, who also commented on that. So, just for the audience to understand that ejection fraction up to 50% was included and ejection fraction less than 25% was excluded.                                                 So also, again, very consistent to your prior point, Victoria.                                                 Could I ask you, I think Dr Mullens also spent quite some time talking about the potential mechanisms. What's your take of this Victoria? ARNI for functional regurgitation. How come? Dr Victoria Delgado:        For me, I'm much more from the side of the imaging point of view. When we have patients with functional mitral regurgitation I always try to see which is the capability that that ventricle has to recover.                                                 Actually, first is always medical therapy, but we know that the [inaudible 00:20:59] only, for example, we just reduced the mitral regurgitation, but they don't really improve the function of that ventricle, while if you reduce the loading conditions of the ventricle in terms of blood pressure as well and favoring remodeling of the left ventricle, you can improve the condition of the mitral valve and reduce the mitral regurgitation.                                                 How valsartan plus sacubitril works differently than valsartan alone that I don't think that I have enough knowledge to explain why but it could be that in a way there is more effective with sacubitril on top of valsartan can improve the loading conditions of the ventricle and improve the, or facilitate, the reversing of morbidity of that ventricle, reducing the mitral regurgitation and that, by itself, could also lead to reversing morbidity.                                                 Like a little bit cardiac resynchronization we'd do, for example, in patients with an ejection fraction below 35% and based on the EEG you have the synchronous fraction of the papillary muscle or the walls of the ventricle which could lead to the mitral regurgitation at the moment that you resynchronize that mitral regurgitation can produce, you reduce part of the volume of the load of the ventricle and that can favor that reversing morbidity.                                                 So, I think that this study raises a lot of questions and I think that further research is needed in order to confirm or to know more how these treatments work. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Goodness, that was so beautifully explained and in fact, many clues from Sung-Hee's study and the reversal of left ventricle end diastolic volume index greater with those treated with ARNI, the LA size and so on.                                                 But maybe I should ask you, Sung-Hee, in line with what Victoria said, what are the next steps? Do you already know what are the next studies that you're going to be looking at in PRIME? Dr Sung-Hee Shin:            We're considering mark of monitoring such as NT pro-BNP or using auto imaging models such as echo and cardiac MRI to look at the change of mitral valve regurgitation in more detail.                                                 This kind of study might be very helpful in understanding [inaudible 00:23:15] ARNI in functional mitral patient. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Yes, that's clever, too. And Victoria, before we end could you maybe give us some take home messages? Dr Victoria Delgado:        I think that the take home message from this study is that when we have patients with functional mitral regurgitation, we need to think what we can offer to them. Not consider mitral regurgitation just as a base standard. That it's going to respond only to diuretics. No. We need to do something on that left ventricle to help it to improve the function and to avoid the progress to more reduced function.                                                 It's very important to understand the mechanism of the mitral regurgitation and to use the guidelines based medical therapy trying to go step by step in order to optimize the medication of that patient and later on, see all the potential treatments that are available right now such as cardiac synchronization therapy, which we should not forget, and then surgery if the patient needs catheterization and if the patient needs the benefit from mitral valve plasty or eventually, for example, trans catheter mitral valve therapies.                                                 But we should avoid that the patient goes further down into heart failure with very dilated ventricles and very poor function because then probably we may face a point of no return. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Thank you so much, Victoria. Both you and Sung-Hee mentioned this is a mechanistic study. So many insights. But it's not saying that everybody with functional mitral regurgitation has to be treated this way now. It's calling for more work and it's certainly very, very important study.                                                 Thank you listeners, for listening today as well. You've been listening to Circulation on the Run. Don't forget to tune in again next week.                                                 This program is copyright American Heart Association, 2019.  

Dr. Carolyn Lam: Welcome to "Circulation on the Run," your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, Associate Editor from the National Heart Center and Duke‐National University of Singapore. Our featured discussion this week focuses on the new 2017 ACC/AHA high blood pressure guidelines, and the potential impact of these guidelines on the U.S. population. A must listen, coming right up after these summaries. The first original paper this week provides insights into how extracellular matrix remodeling contributes to in‐stent restenosis and thrombosis. First author, Dr. Suna, corresponding author, Dr. Mayr, and colleagues from King's College London, implanted bare metal and drug‐eluting stents in pig coronary arteries with an overstretch and then harvested the stented segments up to 28 days poststenting for proteomics analysis of the media and neointima. The authors found significant differences by proteomics in the extracellular matrix of coronary arteries after stent implantation. Most notably, an upregulation of aggrecan, a major extracellular matrix component of cartilaginous tissues that confers resistance to compression. In fact, this study provided the first evidence implicating aggrecan and aggrecanases in the vascular injury response after stenting. This opens a door to consideration of aggrecanase activity as new drug targets that may alter extracellular matrix remodeling in the vasculature. The next paper tells us that empagliflozin could address a significant unmet need in patients with chronic kidney disease. First and corresponding author, Dr. Wanner, from Wurzburg University Clinic in Germany investigated the effects of empagliflozin on clinical outcomes in patients with chronic kidney disease in the EMPA‐REG OUTCOME trial, where patients with type 2 diabetes, established cardiovascular disease, and an eGFR above 30 at screening were randomized to receive empagliflozin or placebo, in addition to standard of care. In the current study, prevalent kidney disease was defined as an eGFR of less than 60 or urine albumin/creatinine ratio of more than 300 at baseline. In these patients, empagliflozin reduced the risk of cardiovascular death by 29% compared with placebo, reduced the risk of all‐cause mortality by 24%, and reduced the risk of hospitalization for heart failure by 39%, and the risk of allcause hospitalization by 19%. The effects of empagliflozin on these outcomes were independent of renal function or albuminuria status at baseline. Furthermore, the adverse event profile of empagliflozin was similar across subgroups by renal function at baseline. Adverse events of particular concern in this population, such as urinary tract infection, acute renal failure, hypokalemia or fractures, lower limb amputations or hypoglycemia were not increased with empagliflozin compared to placebo. The next study provides mechanistic insights into exercise intolerance in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction or HFpEF. First author, Dr. Houstis, corresponding author, Dr. Lewis and colleagues from Massachusetts General Hospital, investigated the mechanism of exercise intolerance in 79 patients with HFpEF and 55 controls referred for cardiopulmonary exercise testing who were also studied with invasive monitoring to measure hemodynamics, blood gases and gas exchange during exercise. These measurements were used to quantify six steps of oxygen transport and utilization in each HFpEF patients, identifying the defective steps that impaired each one's exercise capacity. The authors then quantified the functional significance of each pathway defect by calculating the improvement in exercise capacity that a patient could expect from correcting the defect. The authors found that the vast majority of HFpEF patients harbored defects at multiple steps of the pathway, the identity and magnitude of which varied widely. Two of these steps, namely, cardiac output and skeletal muscle oxygen diffusion were impaired relative to controls by an average of 27% and 36% respectively. Due to interactions between a given patient's defects, the predicted benefit of correcting any single defect was often minor. At the individual level, the impact of any given pathway defect on a patient's exercise capacity was strongly influenced by comorbid defects. The authors concluded that a personalized pathway analysis could identify patients most likely to benefit from treating a specific defect. However, the system properties of oxygen transport favor treating multiple defects at once, such as, with exercise training. What are the potential benefits or risks of intensive systolic blood pressure lowering in individuals with a low diastolic blood pressure? Well, the final paper today tells us. In this study by first and corresponding author, Dr. Beddhu, and colleagues from Salt Lake City in Utah, a post hoc analysis of the SPRINT trial was performed. Remember that the SPRINT trial was a randomized control trial that compared the effects of intensive versus standard systolic blood pressure control in older adults with high blood pressure at increased risk of cardiovascular disease. The current post hoc analysis examined whether the effects of the systolic blood pressure intervention differed by baseline diastolic blood pressure. The authors found that there were U‐shaped relationships of baseline diastolic blood pressure with the primary cardiovascular disease outcome and all‐cause death. However, the beneficial effects of intensive systolic blood pressure lowering on the primary cardiovascular disease outcome in all‐cause death were not modified by baseline level of diastolic blood pressure. Increased risk of kidney events and serious adverse effects of the intervention were consistent across baseline diastolic blood pressure quintals. Therefore, there was no evidence that the benefit of intensive systolic blood pressure lowering differed by baseline diastolic blood pressure levels. These findings suggest that the reason for the observed associations of worse outcomes with lower diastolic blood pressure was due to underlying processes, such as increased arterial stiffness that lead to a decline in diastolic blood pressure, rather than the level of diastolic blood pressure per se. Furthermore, lower levels of diastolic blood pressure within the ranges examined in SPRINT, should not be an impediment to intensive treatment of hypertension, at least in those without diabetes or stroke. Well, that wraps it up for our summaries. Now for our feature discussion. The ACC/AHA guidelines for the management of hypertension in adults has really been a hot topic. Just published this year, and it really updates the seventh JNC report, which was published in 2003. Well, today's feature paper deals directly with a comparison of these two guidelines and how it may impact our practice. I'm so pleased to have with us today the first and corresponding author of this paper, Dr. Paul Muntner, from University of Alabama at Birmingham and a very familiar wonderful voice, Dr. Wanpen Vongpatanasin, associate editor from UT Southwestern. Welcome! Dr. Paul Muntner: Hi. Thank you for having me. Dr. Wanpen Vongpatanasin: Hi, Carolyn. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Paul, could I ask for you to start by painting the differences between the 2017 ACC/AHA guidelines and the JNC 7? We understand you were part of writing the guidelines, so who better than to draw our attention to the main differences. Dr. Paul Muntner: I think that the new guideline, the ACC/AHA guideline, it was fairly comprehensive included 15 chapters, so there's a lot of new information in the guideline, everything from a dedicated section on the measurement of blood pressure to aspects of patient care. The manuscripts featured in "Circulation" in this issue is focused on, in the past, there's different blood pressure thresholds in the guideline for defining hypertension, as well as recommendations for antihypertensive medication treatments, as well as blood pressure goals. As everyone probably knows form JNC 7, hypertension was defined as a systolic blood pressure greater than or equal to 140 mmHg and/or a diastolic blood pressure greater than or equal to 90 mmHg, versus in the 2017 ACC/AHA guideline, these were lowered to 130/80. In terms of treatment recommendations, there's really a fundamental shift with the new guideline, where the new guideline focuses not just on blood pressure levels, but also on overall cardiovascular disease risk. So going to the new guideline, people are recommended treatment if their blood pressure is above 140/90 but also there's a group with a blood pressure in the 130 to 139 range for systolic blood pressure, of 80 to 89 mmHg for diastolic blood pressure, who are recommended treatment if they have a high cardiovascular disease risk. Finally, I'll just finish with this last note is that blood pressure control for people taking antihypertensive medication is now 130/80 so a goal blood pressure for people taking antihypertensive medication is systolic blood pressure less than 130 mmHg, and a diastolic blood pressure less than 80 mmHg. Dr. Carolyn Lam: That was beautifully explained. Paul, I just really loved table 1 of your paper, and I want to refer our audience to it. It so nicely summarizes the differences between the 2017 guidelines and JNC 7. At risk of oversimplifying, when you compare the two in this approach, it's sort of comparing using a cardiovascular risk in conjunction with blood pressure‐type approach with a blood pressureonly number approach, isn't it? Dr. Paul Muntner: Right. I think that's a key important piece of the new guideline and really CVD risk is used in conjunction with blood pressure levels to guide the recommendation to initiate antihypertensive medication. This decision was based on a wide variety of data from randomized trials, observational studies, as well as simulation or economic analyses that consistently showed the benefits of considering an individual's overall cardiovascular disease risk and providing effective and efficient treatment for lowering blood pressure. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Right. And you analyzed the impact of this in the NHANES data in today's paper. Could you tell us a bit more about that? Dr. Paul Muntner: The U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES, provides an opportunity to generate national representative point estimates on the prevalence of hypertension and treatment recommendations. So we're able to use data on about 9500 U.S. adults. Each person came in for a clinic examination where they had their blood pressure measured three times, and they were asked about their use of antihypertensive medication. What we found was the prevalence of hypertension, or the percentage of U.S. adults with hypertension according to the new guideline, is about 46%, which compares to 32% according to the JNC 7 guideline, so really a big increase in the prevalence of hypertension of about 14%. However, by using the combination of risk and blood pressure, we're not recommending treatment for everyone with hypertension but rather people with hypertension with very high blood pressure as well as those at high cardiovascular disease risk. So antihypertensive treatment, pharmacological antihypertensive treatment, is now being recommended for about 36% of U.S. adults compared to 34% of U.S. adults according to JNC 7. The rest of the people with hypertension are recommended nonpharmacological therapies; exercise, diet, alcohol reduction, weight loss for people who are overweight and obese. Really, it's an opportunity to treat people with pharmacological therapy if they're high risk. Then for people who aren't high risk, there's an opportunity for nonpharmacological therapies, so they can, hopefully, prevent the need for further treatment. Overall, this equates to about 103 million U.S. adults with hypertension, so it's a very large number. However, only about 82 million of these individuals are recommended pharmacological antihypertensive treatment, so there's a big portion of the U.S. population who have hypertension, have high blood pressure, yet we think would benefit from nonpharmacological therapy. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wanpen, could I get you to chime in on what you think of the clinical implications of today's paper? Dr. Wanpen Vongpatanasin: I think that this paper gives us at least reassurance that although we have 30 million more people with hypertension now, not all of them have to be started on medication right away. But it also put an emphasis on cardiovascular risk assessment, which we as the cardiologist are already doing this on a regular basis. It is a major step forward to incorporate cardiovascular risks as another way to gauge how people should be treated intensively, which we like that aspect of it. Dr. Carolyn Lam: I agree. I think it's reassuring because most people think, "Oh, my goodness. We have got so much more hypertensives to manage." But then it tells us that a restratified approach really keeps it manageable, I suppose. But Wanpen, did you have some specific concerns or questions? Dr. Wanpen Vongpatanasin: We look at the people who by JNC 7 calls prehypertension, which it's now some of them turn out to be a stage 1 hypertension. The question I have for Paul is that even though guidelines call for nonpharmacologic treatment first, the guidelines said give a try from three to six months, but what happens after that if they're still not reaching the goal? Would people on the guidelines propose drug treatment eventually because, as you know, nonpharmacology treatment is easier said than done. Even though you might be able to tackle some aspect of it, but I doubt you can tackle everything; exercise, diet, sodium, weight loss all at the same time in a three to six month period. Dr. Paul Muntner: It's a great question and it's something that the guidelines really spent a lot of time considering and reviewing the evidence. First, what the recommendation is that we recommend nonpharmacological intervention as you mentioned and the re‐evaluation. If the person's blood pressure remains in the stage 1 hypertension range and they're not a high cardiovascular disease risk, then they are recommended to continue attempts at the nonpharmacological interventions. I've been asked several times since the guideline has been published, "What, are we supposed to just wait until people become high risk?" And my viewpoint on this is, it's hard enough to get people to adhere to their medications currently, let's be judicious about this, focus on the high‐risk people, and maybe if we can communicate with people that have high‐risk for cardiovascular disease, we can work with patients to improve medication adherence and really focus on the low‐risk people in preventing the need for lifelong therapy. Dr. Wanpen Vongpatanasin: That's great, I think that's really helpful in clarifying this point. Because even if you say that 30 million doesn't need to be started on the drug right away, that eventually have to be started on drug in six months, I think that doesn't really give us a reassurance but, obviously, we still have to continue to work on these patients who are on the fence of needing pharmacology intervention. Dr. Paul Muntner: Right. I think what's interesting here is a lot of people since the guideline has been published have said to me, "Now this is done." I said, "No. Now we're really just starting. Now is the most important part of the guideline, which is implementation." And how are we going to implement the guideline, which, as we were just discussing, isn't just about initiating pharmacological therapy, but it's also about the nonpharmacological therapies as well as medication adherence and all these other issues that are in the guideline, proper measurement of blood pressure, etc. I think that now is going to be the most important time to really have a big impact on our patients' lives by really using the evidence and now that it's in the guideline, we're using the evidence to direct treatment appropriately. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Indeed, Paul. Just one thing. Along the lines of implementation, how about the issue of the lower target BP, to treat to? What did your study from NHANES show about that, numbers reaching targets, and do you see that as an issue? Dr. Paul Muntner: It's an interesting question because the findings from our study found that it's currently over half of U.S. adults according to the new guideline, over half of U.S. adults on antihypertensive medication, have blood pressure above the goal in the new guideline. So in our study, 53% of U.S. adults taking antihypertensive medication had a blood pressure above 130/80. This represents an increase from the JNC 7 guideline of people with blood pressure above 140/90, of course, of about 14.4%. According to our estimates, there are about 8 million U.S. adults who are going to be recommended more intensive antihypertensive medication. The blood pressure of less than 130/80 is a uniform goal for all people taking antihypertensive medication. This comes from several meta‐analyses that have consistently shown the cardiovascular and mortality risk reduction associated with achieving a blood pressure of less than 130/80. I think there's very firm evidence to stand on. One interesting thing from the guidelines, it's in one of the tables, and I think it's a very important point to make, is that a lot of people who have above goal blood pressure, according to the new guideline, they're only taking one or two classes of antihypertensive medication. The vast majority of them are not taking multiple classes of antihypertensive medication, so we feel that these therapies can be optimized and we're not going to be pushing people into antihypertensive polypharmacy but rather they can receive substantial risk reductions without really giving them too many additional pills. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wow. Really about implementation. Wanpen, did you have any other comments before we close? Dr. Wanpen Vongpatanasin: Yes, I think that is really interesting to see also with these guidelines how is this going to be embraced to the rest of the world. Actually, prior to this guideline, at least hypertension control rate in the U.S. is better than most countries, European countries, as well as in Asia. But now even lowering the bar, we use the same criteria for the rest of the world, that would be a lot worse control rate than now. I think it will be challenging, not only in this country but throughout the world. Dr. Paul Muntner: That's a great point. Obviously, these guidelines are U.S. guidelines, however, new European guidelines should be coming out in 2018, is what I've heard. I think that even though these guidelines were developed by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association, the data that we're using really comes from worldwide evidence. The evidence didn't stop at the borders. A lot of the evidence that was used in choosing the blood pressure levels to define hypertension, the blood pressure levels to recommend pharmacological interventions, as well as the blood pressure goals do come from other countries. A lot of data from Asia, Europe, Australia, so I think that the data used in these guidelines should be generalized when it's out of the United States. I think there may be challenges with implementing these guidelines in different settings, and, obviously, a lot of things will have to be tailored to where they will be implemented. However, the overall goal is to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease and renal disease related to hypertension and, hopefully, that can be a worldwide goal. Dr. Carolyn Lam: What a great reminder. It is worldwide data, worldwide evidence for a worldwide problem. Well, listeners, you heard it right here on "Circulation on the Run." Thank you so much for joining us today and don't forget to tune in again next week.

While good glycemic control has been shown to prevent microvascular complications (e.g. retinopathy, nephropathy, neuropathy), only a few anti-diabetic agents have been shown to reduce macrovascular complications (e.g. cardiovascular events. Empagliflozin, a sodium glucose transporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitor, not only reduced the risk of CV events but also all-cause mortality in the EMPA-REG OUTCOME study.  Based on this data, the SGLT2 inhibitors were given favorable second-line treatment status in the most recent AACE/ACE clinical practice guidelines. But do all SGLT2 inhibitors confer the same benefits… and risks? The Canagliflozin and Cardiovascular and Renal Events in Type 2 Diabetes (CANVAS) trial assessed the cardiovascular and renal benefits from long-term canagliflozin use.  The results are both reassuring and unexpected. Guest Author:  Sean Lasota, Pharm.D. Music by Good Talk

Dr. Carolyn Lam:               Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, Associate Editor, from the National Heart Center and Duke-National University of Singapore.                                                 Now, the SGLT2 inhibitor, empagliflozin, has been shown to improve outcomes in the EMPA-REG OUTCOMES trial. But do these benefits also apply in the real world, and to other SGLT2 inhibitors as a class? Well, we may just have some answers this week in the CVD-REAL study. More soon right after these summaries.                                                 The first original paper this week uncovers the mechanism of beneficial action of T-cells for proper healing after myocardial infarction. Now, the pro-inflammatory danger signal, adenosine triphosphate or ATP, is released from damaged cells, and degraded by the ectonucleotidase CD73 to the anti-inflammatory mediator, adenosine.                                                 Using newly-generated CD4-CD73 null mice, first author, Dr. Borg, corresponding author, Dr. Schrader, and colleagues from Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf in Germany, showed that a lack of CD73 on T-cells enhanced tissue fibrosis and worsened myocardial function in the remodeling phase after myocardial infarction.                                                 T-cells migrated into the injured heart and upregulated their enzymatic machinery to enhance the extracellular degradation of ATP to adenosine. T-cells lacking CD73 showed accelerated production of pro-inflammatory and profibrotic cytokines. Finally, the adenosine 2B receptor was upregulated on cardiac immune cells in the remodeling phase.                                                 In summary, therefore, local adenosine formation by CD73 on T-cells appears to be the body's own defense mechanism to control inflammation induced by myocardial infarction. This is a mechanism that might be exploited to promote healing or remodeling by specifically targeting the adenosine 2B receptor in the infarcted heart.                                                 The next paper provides insights on genetic determinants of susceptibility to peripheral artery disease, and specifically puts the spotlight on Bcl-2-associated athanogene-3, or Bag3, which is a cell chaperone protein previously identified in a genetic screen for determinants of tissue loss with hindlimb ischemia.                                                 In the current study, Dr. McClung from East Carolina University, Brody School of Medicine in Greenville, North Carolina, and colleagues, used adeno-associated viruses to show that an isoleucine to methionine variant at position 81 in Bag3 was sufficient to confer susceptibility to ischemic tissue necrosis in BALB/c mice.                                                 In a series of elegant experiments, they demonstrated that Bag3 was a modulator of ischemic muscle necrosis and blood flow. In summary, this study provides evidence that genetic variation in Bag3 plays an important role in the prevention of ischemic tissue necrosis, and highlights a pathway that preserves tissue survival and muscle function in the setting of ischemia.                                                 The next study provides insights into inflammatory atherogenesis by studying psoriasis, a chronic inflammatory disease associated with an accelerated risk of myocardial infarction. First author, Dr. Lerman, corresponding author, Dr. Mehta from the NHLBI, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, United States, and colleagues, hypothesized that the increased cardiovascular risk observed in psoriasis would be partially attributable to an elevated subclinical coronary artery disease burden composed of non-calcified plaques with high-risk features.                                                 To test this hypothesis, they compared total coronary plaque burden, non-calcified coronary plaque burden, and high-risk plaque prevalence between 105 psoriasis patients, 100 older hypolipidemic patients eligible for statin therapy, and 25 non-psoriasis healthy volunteers. All patients underwent CT coronary angiography, and a sample of the first 50 psoriasis patients were scanned again at one year following therapy.                                                 The authors found that patients with psoriasis had greater non-coronary burden and increased high-risk plaque prevalence compared to healthy volunteers. Furthermore, compared to older hypolipidemic patients, patients with psoriasis had elevated non-calcified burden, and equivalent high-risk plaque prevalence. Finally, improvement in skin disease severity was associated with an improvement in non-calcified coronary burden at one year.                                                 The clinical implications are that patients with psoriasis have similar coronary artery disease risk as hyperlipidemic patients one decade older, and these patients with psoriasis should be screened earlier for cardiovascular disease and educated about their elevated risks. Further investigations focus on the longitudinal impact of psoriasis treatment on high-risk plaque morphology, as well as on the extent of cardiovascular risk mitigation in randomized trials.                                                 Well, those were your summaries. Now for our feature discussion. Now, we've heard of the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial, that prospective randomized, controlled trial, showing a substantial reduction in cardiovascular death and hospitalization for heart failure with the sodium-glucose cotransporter 2, or SGLT2 inhibitor, empagliflozin, and that's, remember, that was in patients with type 2 diabetes and established atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.                                                 Well, our paper today really extends our knowledge and tells us a bit more about the role of SGLT2 inhibitors in real-world clinical care. And I'm so please to have with us the first and corresponding author, Dr. Mikhail Kosiborod from Saint Luke's, Mid America Heart Institute, as well as Dr. Gabriel Steg, associate editor from Paris, France, joining us today. Hello, gentlemen. Dr. Gabriel Steg:               Hello. Dr. Mikhail Kosiborod:   Hi. Good morning, Carolyn. Dr. Carolyn Lam:               Mikhail, I am going to say what I said to you at the ACC and at the ESC Heart Failure: Congratulations on CVD-REAL. Please tell us about CVD-REAL. Dr. Mikhail Kosiborod:   Right, well, we know, as you just mentioned, that the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial showed substantial reduction in cardiovascular death, and hospitalizations for heart failure in patients with type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular disease. We were all very excited once that data got presented in September of 2015 in Stockholm, but there were several very important questions that weren't really addressed, and truly, could not be addressed, in EMPA-REG's trial.                                                 The first, actually, and probably the most important is, we all know that clinical trials, while we regard them as the gold standard of evidence, as we should, they do have their own set of limitations, the most important of which is that they examine a relatively small sliver of patients; and many patients we see in the clinic, in the hospital, don't look like patients in clinical trials. I think the most important questions we tried to address was, "Will this translate to real-world clinical practice?"                                                 The second was, as you recall, again, all patients on EMPA-REG had established cardiovascular disease, so we wanted to know whether the benefits associated with the use of SGLT2 inhibitors could potentially extend to lower-risk patients with type 2 diabetes without established cardiovascular disease, a much broader spectrum of patients.                                                 And finally, and also very importantly, I think, the third question was, "Is it an empagliflozin-specific effect or is it a class effect?" These are all the critical questions we tried to address in the CVD-REAL study. Dr. Carolyn Lam:               Great. Could you give us the topline results, please? Dr. Mikhail Kosiborod:   Right. So, just as a reminder, we collected data from well-established registries in six countries, so the United States and some five countries in Europe, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and also, the United Kingdom and Germany. And really, the inclusion/exclusion criteria for the study were quite broad, you just had to have type 2 diabetes and be newly started on either an SGLT2 inhibitor or any other glucose-lowering medications, which was the comparative group.                                                 And after we did the one-to-one propensity match to make sure, comparable samples, we ended up with about 154,000 patients, and each treatment group, over 300,000 patients overall. What we actually observed was a marked and highly significant reduction in the risk of hospitalization for heart failure that was associated with use of SGLT2 inhibitors versus other glucose-lowering drugs.                                                 In fact, the magnitude of reduction in risk that was associated with SGLT2 inhibitors, so that outcome was quite similar, about 39% relative risk reduction, quite similar to what we see in the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial. But this, of course, was for the entire class of SGLT2 inhibitors, so patients in the study were treated primarily with canagliflozin and dapagliflozin, with a small proportion being treated with empagliflozin.                                                 We also saw dramatic and highly significant associated reduction in the risk of all-cause death with SGLT2 inhibitors versus other glucose-lowering drugs, about a 51% relative risk reduction, and the composite of those two outcomes, obviously, there was significant associated reduction in risk as well.                                                 So, again, the hazard ratio estimate that we saw for these outcomes were quite similar, and in some cases, almost identical to what we've seen in EMPA-REG, but for a patient population that was much broader, in fact, about 90% of patients, close to 90% of patients in our study did not have established, documented cardiovascular disease. And, of course, as I mentioned before, important implications to these findings, in my opinion. Dr. Carolyn Lam:               Yeah, that is just remarkable. Gabriel, could you share some of the discussions that happened among the editors about this paper? Dr. Gabriel Steg:               We were really excited by this paper. I think this is truly a landmark paper for a number of reasons. It's a very large, multinational study, but even more than the size, I think what's interesting here are a couple of key aspects. First of all is data on all-cause mortality, which is a highly reliable outcome when you look at many of the observational studies.                                                 Non-fatal outcomes can easily be skewed or biased in ascertainment or assessment, but this is relatively reliable. And here, we have a very large multinational cohort that finds benefits on death, heart failure, and their composite, which are remarkably consistent internally, consistent across countries, and consistent with the randomized trial data evidence from the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial.                                                 So that is striking, and this is consistent across six countries using a very large sample size. But again, the size of the sample is not the most important thing, because in observational studies, you often have very large sample sizes, but if you have bias in your observational study, the bias is just replicated times the size of the study.                                                 The consistency here between the treatment effects across the various countries, the consistency with the efficacy assessed in randomized clinical trials is really a crux in the quality of the data and how believable the results are. Another key aspect that got us really excited is the fact that only a minute fraction of the data is related to use of empagliflozin.                                                 Most of the data was acquired using other SGLT2, and we still only have results now with empagliflozin, we don't have outcome trial data with the other agents. They are pending, but pending the availability of these trials, the fact that this large study sees a consistent benefit, in terms of heart failure and mortality, of the other agents in the class suggests that this is a class effect.                                                 And likewise, the fact that we're seeing these benefits in a population that is much, much broader than the population of EMPA-REG OUTCOMES is also very, very intriguing, and exciting, and makes us really want to see more data not only from the randomized trials that are upcoming, but also from this study.                                                 Because now, what we would like to see is, see the detailed cardiovascular outcomes in these cohorts, and I know that Mikhail and his colleagues are working very, very actively on preparing these analyses. I think this is going to be exciting. This is the first of a series of landmark papers from a model observational study.                                                 There are many issues with observational studies. This is almost as good as it can ever get, and I want to compliment Mikhail and the consortium that's with him, because this is a tremendous effort, across several countries, on achieving this. I think it's very exciting for our readership and for clinicians around the world. Dr. Carolyn Lam:               I couldn't agree more, and I share your compliments for Mikhail. Perhaps, Mikhail, could you give us a sneak peek at the future and the ongoing work? Dr. Mikhail Kosiborod:   We frequently think of, and I think perhaps mistakenly at times, think of clinical trials and observational real-world data as competing with one another. In many cases, they're really complementary, and I think if you really, kind of, think of interventions that we consider as those gold standards enshrined in clinical guidelines, or something we absolutely should be doing for our patients.                                                 Just to pick one example, statins for secondary prevention after a cardiovascular event, for example, there is data from both sources suggesting that these drugs are highly beneficial, right? So it is very important to have data from both sides, and I think, as Gabriel mentioned, I look at CVD-REAL as a model, in many ways, of how compelling the data from non-randomized, large, real-world observational studies can be when done well.                                                 In terms of a sneak peek for the future, there are many, many things going on. We are carefully examining the outcomes that we are reporting in circulation, including heart failure and all-cause mortality in various subgroups. We are, of course, as Gabriel mentioned, intently looking at other outcomes, including myocardial infarction, stroke, cardiovascular death, and a composite of major adverse cardiac events.                                                 We're also examining some of the diabetes, one could argue, maybe, diabetes-specific outcomes, such as hypoglycemia rates. We, of course, as cardiologists tend to concentrate on cardiovascular outcomes, but it's also important to remember that there are other important outcomes that could be associated benefits.                                                 So these medications may be associated with marked reduction of cardiovascular events, such as death and heart failure, but they may also reduce hypoglycemia rates and, of course, that's important from a quality-of-life standpoint for patients with diabetes, so some of that work is ongoing.                                                 And I would say, importantly, one of the other things that we're hoping to be able to do in the future is to go beyond cardiovascular outcomes, and perhaps blood glucose-specific outcomes, such as hypoglycemia, and start looking at events such as renal disease events, which I think are very important, of course. Interact quite a bit with, I suspect, in many ways, with some of the cardiovascular benefits that we're observing with those agents, both in the clinical trials and, now, in large observational studies.                                                 And that's just the beginning. I mean, I think it's fair to say that, as Gabriel mentioned, a huge amount of work went into putting this together, right? And we're actually not only expanding things from a standpoint of outcomes. We're also expanding things from a standpoint of countries that will be participating in CVD-REAL consortium.                                                 So we're actually planning to add at least two or three more countries from Europe, Middle East, and Asia in the coming months, and more so in the future. And of course, once you have a resource like this, there are additional questions that can be addressed, actually, both with SGLT2 inhibitors as a class, but also with other classes of type 2 diabetes medication. So that's, I think, as much of a sneak peek as I can give you right now. Just definitely promise you that there is a lot more coming.                                                 In addition to ADA, we're going to have abstracts being presented at ESC in August, and also the European Association for the Study of Diabetes meeting in Lisbon, in September, and there's going to be a lot more afterwards as well. So just stay tuned, I would say. This is definitely just the beginning. There's going to be a lot more coming. Dr. Carolyn Lam:               You took the words right out of my mouth. Listeners, stay tuned, and don't forget to tune in next week as well.  

    Dr. Lam: Welcome to Circulation on the Run. Your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the Journal and it's editors. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, Associate Editor from the National Heart Center, and Duke National University of Singapore. Dr. Sanjay Kaul and Darren McGuire will be joining me in just a moment to share their perspectives on the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trials. Are the results with empagliflozin in diabetic patients at high risk, are they too good to be true. First, here are the highlights from five original papers in this week's issue. The first paper is from Dr. Gilboa, from the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, and Dr. Marelli from the McGill Adult Unit for congenital heart diseases in Montreal, Quebec, and colleagues. These authors recognize that because of advancements in care there has been a decline in mortality from congenital heart defects over the last several decades. However, there are still no current empirical data documenting the number of people living with congenital heart defects in the United States. These authors address this gap in knowledge by using prevalence data from Quebec, Canada, in the year 2010, as a foundation for a mathematical model, and estimated that in the United States in the year 2010, approximately 2.4 million people, including 1.4 million adults, and 1 million children were living with congenital heart defects. This estimate is significant, because it corresponds to a 63% increase in the estimated size of the adult population with congenital heart defects in the United States since the year 2000. This has significant implications for resource allocation for health services delivery that will need to account for this growing population of adults with congenital heart defects. The second paper is from first author Dr. Tabot, and corresponding author Dr. Liao, from the University of Chicago, and colleagues who aim to understand better the common complication of angiodysplasia leading to nonsurgical bleeding in patients with left ventricular assist devices. The authors studied 101 patients with heart failure, left ventricular assist devices, or orthotopic heart transplants. They found that compared to patients with heart failure, or transplant patients, patients with left ventricular assist devices had elevated serum levels, and endothelial expression of angiopoietin-2, which is a potent angiogenic mediator. Elevated levels of angiopoietin-2 in these patients increase angiogenesis in vitro, and were associated with bleeding events. Furthermore, they found that increased thrombin levels in left ventricular assist device patients were associated with elevated angiopoietin-2 levels. In aggregate, therefore, the results indicate that high levels of thrombin induced endothelial angiopoietin-2 expression, which may then contribute to angiodysplasia and non-surgical bleeding in patients with left ventricular assist devices. The clinical implications are that clinical studies angiopoietin-2, and factor 12 inhibitors may therefore be indicated to prevent nonsurgical bleeding in patients with left ventricular assist devices. The third paper is Dr. Gordon from Hasbro Children's Hospital in Rhode Island, and Dr. Kieran from the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues who addressed the Hutchinson Gilford Progeria Syndrome. An extremely rare, fatal segmental premature aging syndrome, where without specific treatment, death usually occurs at an average age of 14 1/2 years from an accelerated atherosclerosis. A PRIA single arm clinical trial has demonstrated that the protein farnesyltransferase inhibitor, Lonafarnib, ameliorates some aspects of cardiovascular and bone disease in this syndrome. The current trial sought to further disease outcomes by additionally inhibiting progerin prenylation using pravastatin and zoledronic acid on top of Lonafarnib in 37 participants with the Progeria syndrome. Results showed that the composite primary study outcome of increased rate weight gain and decreased carotid artery echodensity was achieved. Overall, participants experienced increased bone density, size, and structural properties. However, unlike the PRIA single arm Lonafarnib monotherapy trial, mean carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity and mean carotid artery adventitial echodensity were not improved. In addition, rates of carotid and femoral artery plaques and extraskeletal calcifications all increased. In summary, compared PRIA Lonafarnib monotherapy treatment, additional bone mineral density benefit, but likely no additional additional cardiovascular benefit was obtained with the addition of pravastatin and zoledronic acid. The authors concluded that since increased bone fracture is not a disease feature, the addition of a combination of statin and biphosphonate to Lonafarnib therapy is not recommended for clinical treatment of Progeria syndrome. However, it is reasonable to consider statins if concurrent lipid abnormalities need to be treated. This paper is accompanied by an excellent editorial by Dr. Francis Collins, who describes our journey in seeking a cure for this rare disease of Progeria. The fourth paper is by first author, Dr. Grisenti and corresponding author Dr. Tilley from Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Temple University in Philadelphia, and colleagues who aimed to better understand the role of leukocyte expressed beta-2 adrenergic receptors in regulating immune cell responses to acute cardiac injury. The authors achieved this aim by studying wild type mice who were irradiated, and then transplanted either with isoform specific beta adrenergic receptor knock out bone marrow, or wild type bone marrow. These chimeric mice, after full reconstitution then underwent myocardial infarction surgery. Results showed that immune cell specific beta-2 adrenergic receptor expression was essential to the repair process following myocardial infarction. In the absence of beta-2 adrenergic receptors, vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 expression was increased in leukocytes, inducing their splenic retention following injury, and leading to impaired scar formation, followed by rupture and death. Splenectomy partially restored the beta-2 adrenergic receptor deficient leukocyte infiltration into the heart, but gene therapy to rescue the leukocyte beta-2 adrenergic receptor expression completely restored all injury responses back to normality. This study is clinically important because it highlights a bit of a tension that we're facing. On the one had, beta adrenergic receptors are known to regulate cardiac function and remodeling following myocardial injury, by their effects through cardiomyocytes. That's why we use beta blockers to prevent, at first, cardiac remodeling. However, the current studies now indicate that inhibition or deletion of the immune cell expressed beta-2 adrenergic receptor causes leukocyte dysfunction, and impaired immunomodulatory responses to myocardial injury. These results may, therefore, have implications on the use of beta blockers around the time of acute myocardial injury, such as myocardial infarction, or perioperatively. This is really an area that needs further research and understanding. The fifth paper is by Dr. Herman, from the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues who report on the one year clinical outcomes of SAPIEN 3 transcatheter aortic valve replacement in high risk and inoperable patients with severe aortic stenosis. Now, as a refresher, in the initial partner trial of transcatheter aortic valve replacement for high risk and inoperable patients with severe symptomatic aortic stenosis, there was a demonstration of marked survival advantage compared to medical management ... But a high one year mortality of 24% in the high risk, and 31% in inoperable patients. More recently, the lower profile SAPIEN 3 prosthesis system has become available. Which has a balloon expandable cobalt chromium frame, with bovine pericardial leaflets, and an external fabric seal. The early 30 day outcomes of this system have been reported, and show a very low rate of adverse events. The current study now reports the one year survival, and showed that all cause survival was more than 85% for all patients, above 87% in the high risk, and above 82% in the inoperable subgroups. Furthermore, there was a high rate of transfemoral access at 84%, and a high all cause and cardiovascular one year survival in the high risk transfemoral subgroup of 89% and 93%, respectively. Between 30 and 365 days, the incidence of moderate perivalvular aortic regurgitation did not increase. There was no association between mild perivalvular leak and one year mortality. Although, a small increase in disabling stroke occurred. These results, which likely reflect device iteration and procedural evolution, support the use of Taver as a therapy to consider in high risk and inoperable patients with aortic stenosis. Those were the highlights from this week's issues, and now for our feature paper. We will be discussing the perspective paper entitled "Is the Mortality Benefit With Empagliflozin in Type 2 Diabetes Too Good to be True?". To discuss this, we have two very special guests. First, Dr. Sanjay Kaul, writer of this paper, and from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Second, Dr. Darren McGuire, deputy editor of circulation from UT Southwestern. Welcome, Sanjay and Darren. Dr. McGuire: Thanks, Carolyn. Dr. Kaul: Thank you, Carolyn. Dr. Lam: To start us off, I'd really love if Darren could please introduce this new content category of circulation. Frame of reference section, of which this is one of the papers, a perspective article. Dr. McGuire: Sure, so we envisioned, as we're evolving circulation to our new editorship, an opportunity for authors, luminaries in the field, to give us in a very encapsulated form, a laser focus perspective on a specific topic. These come in two flavors, the perspectives piece, which this is, is a little more evidence and scientific quantitatively based. Then we'll also have a section called on my mind, which is more of a free-flowing opinion editorial targeting possibly a contentious or controversial issue. These are going to be very short, and hopefully very entertaining, and kind of teasers for the readership of the Journal. Dr. Lam: Sanjay, you made it very personal, and I like that, too. Share with us how this idea came about. Dr. Kaul: Well, I was very impressed at the reception that the results of the EMPA-REG outcome trial received at the EAST meeting at Starcom last year. While I was witnessing the applause, I had polar reactions. On one hand, I thought that after nearly five decades of trials with checkered history, with regards to cardiovascular outcomes, here we have for the first time a trial demonstrating not only cardiovascular benefit, but a mortality benefit. I thought maybe it's time to take the trumpets out and sort of herald this holy grail, which we had failed to achieve. On the other hand, realizing that we had been fooled before many times by trials, yielding implausibly large treatments actually, that were never replicated at subsequent trials. I had a skeptical response to it, and sort of asked this question rather tongue-in-cheek, or maybe used as a rhetorical tool to address whether this mortality benefit was too good to be true. Dr. Lam: You know, you didn't just question it. You examined the data, and provided even more evidence. That's what I was impressed with in your paper. That table where you provided base factor, as well as a Bayesian analysis. Could you break that down for us, and explain what you found? Dr. Kaul: Yes, I was trying to sort of examine the strength of the evidence, in terms of the quantitative aspect. Yes, the effect size for the cardiovascular benefit was quite impressive. For the primary endpoint, which was a compositive cardiovascular, death, non-fatal MI, and non-fatal stroke, the p-value was not very robust. It was .04. The p-value tends to overestimate the strength of evidence. I utilized base factor, which basically is a metric that allows the two competing hypotheses to predict the data. Using the base factor, I was able to demonstrate that the alternative hypothesis was stronger than the null hypothesis by eight-fold. The p-value of .04 translated into a base factor of .13. Which is not strong evidence against the null hypothesis. It requires independent confirmation and subsequent trials. A p-value of .04, while meeting the superiority criteria, would not be sufficient enough to meet the FDA's requirement of substantial effectiveness. Substantial effectiveness just basically means that the FDA requires two trials, each with a p-value less than .05. In 1998, they modified their regulatory requirement, and accepted that one single trial would be sufficient, provided that there would be a persuasive p-value. Persuasive basically is defined as a p-value less than .001. The base factor allows us to sort of interpret the strength of the evidence, with respect to the primary composite endpoint was not strong enough to meet this requirement. With respect to cardiovascular mortality, as well as all cause mortality, which trumps all other endpoints, it was persuasive enough. Dr. Lam: What's your conclusion on that? Dr. Kaul: What is controversial about that was that in the three specified statistical plan, the so-called hierarchical testing strategy, the non-inferiority for three point MACE, followed by non-inferiority for four point MACE, and followed by superiority of three point MACE, and lastly, superiority of four point MACE. Because the p-value of four point MACE superiority was .08, one can argue purely from a statistical perspective that you stop your testing strategy, and any analysis beyond that would be deemed exploratory. Even though cardiovascular mortality and all cause mortality was prespecified, the purist would argue that since you failed superiority for four point MACE, you really can't proceed further. You can analyze, but it will be considered an exploratory analysis. I sort of wept and said that because Christopher Columbus had prespecified that he will be discovering the route to India, the fact that he stumbled upon America does not mean it doesn't exist because he had not prespecified it. I think all cause mortality is the most meaningful endpoint, and the least subjective measurement error. It meets the key attributes of regulatory decision making. Which it's prespecified, it's highly persuasive, therefore, it meets the replication criteria, and the p-value is so robust that even if you adjust for nearly 100 multiple comparisons, the p-value would still hold. It meets all the regulatory criteria for approval. Dr. McGuire: Sanjay, let me just chime in here. I think it's also important, not only were these prespecified, but it's important, I think, for readers of these diabetes programs to realize that hospitalization for heart failure ... Although it's not part of the primary outcome ... In virtually every one of these trials, it is prospectively collected, chartered to find, and essentially adjudicated by blind endpoint adjudicators. You know, death is death. Cardiovascular death in these programs are all adjudicated, as well. I think the prospective collection and central adjudication also adds legitimacy to the hospitalization for heart failure are above and beyond the analytic issues. Dr. Lam: Darren and Sanjay, I hear both of you kind of saying it does look like, even looking at it from different angles, the data do look strong. At the end of the day, Sanjay, you concluded that it does need another trial. Results do need to be replicated. That was your conclusion. I'd love to hear Darren's take on this. Dr. McGuire: I think what Sanjay is saying there, and I think what we all believe, was we would really love to see this observation with another member or members of the class. We're learning a lot in hindsight based on these observations, and people are exploring potential mechanistic underpinnings. We're learning a lot about the mechanisms of these medications, above and beyond their glucose uric effects. There's a lot of implication about renal physiology and hemodynamics, and altered myocardial metabolism. I think as Sanjay points out in the paper, some of this looks like a possible arrhythmic effect. We have a lot to learn about this mechanism of action, and whether or not this will be unique to impact gliflozin. It has been publicly announced, Boehringer Ingelheim is planning, they're in the planning phases for heart failure trials with empagliflozin to further explore this signal. I think they will address Sanjay's desire to have some replication in a different patient population. Still, we would love to see these extended into other patient populations. To both extend the use of the medications if they're found, but also provide further confirmation of the observations from EMPA-REG outcome. Dr. Kaul: Carolyn, let me also add, I used the title as a rhetorical tool, as I stated earlier. I do conclude that the mortality data is not likely to be spurious. In the back of my mind, I still have that 1% skepticism that I would like to eliminate, because the findings were totally unexpected, and unprecedented, as we discussed earlier. If all the pathways, including the mechanistic pathways are aligned, I would have substantial reassurance, beyond any reasonable doubt that the findings are true. That's why I'm asking for replication. Not necessarily by empagliflozin in other trials, but by another molecule within the same class. I think that would be sufficient. Dr. McGuire: Yeah, and I think it's really interesting to note there, is that I was involved in the early days of some of these drugs as they're being developed. When the other two members of this class went to the FDA, dapagliflozin and canagliflozin, they provided FDA's requirement and meta analysis from all of the phase 2B and 3 trials that had been completed to date. The meta analysis of the cardiovascular outcomes. Both dapagliflozin and canagliflozin had point estimates of cardiovascular death reduction of 30%, and 35%, respectively. When we saw those data, they were based on 25 to 40 total events. We chuckled, thinking this is spurious, from small events being analyzed. That there's no way they would prevent cardiovascular death. Sure enough, you know, you could almost superimpose those point estimate plots from the phase 2B-3 meta analysis, with the ultimate outcomes from EMPA-REG. There's some promising, although again, very statistically imprecise estimates that this may well be a class effect. As many of the listeners will know, there are ongoing cardiovascular outcomes trials for all of these medications. That will come some time in the next year or two. Dr. Lam: That's fantastic. Thank you both for sharing those perspectives. I mean, I learned so much. I really think, Sanjay, your paper achieved exactly what you had meant for it to achieve, and exactly what circulation was hoping to create the discussion, as well. Dr. McGuire: Thank you, Carolyn. Dr. Kaul: Thank you very much. Dr. Lam: You've been listening to Circulation on the Run. Thank you for listening. Don't forget to join us next week for more highlights and discussions.  

In this episode, we discuss two new anti-diabetic medications: empagliflozin (Jardiance) and the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial as well as dulaglutide (Trulicity), a new GLP1 agonist.