Associate Professor Josh Lewis
Edith Cowan University (ECU) researchers will lead a global team researching how to better prevent a novel aspect of cardiovascular disease, after winning $1.2 million in funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.
The three-year Medical Research Future Fund – Cardiovascular Health Mission grant will allow the team to further research abdominal aortic calcification (AAC), which is a build-up of calcium in the body's largest artery and a reliable marker for cardiovascular disease risk.
The project is a collaboration between ECU’s Nutrition and Health Innovation Research Institute, Heart Foundation, University of Queensland, University of WA, Flinders University and collaborators in the US, UK and Canada.
It will use a newly developed artificial intelligence algorithm which will learn to automatically detect and measure AAC based on lateral spine images taken from bone density machines used for screening of osteoporosis.
Lead investigator Associate Professor Joshua Lewis, said the team will then use these AAC results in large studies with detailed genetic and lifestyle information, and explore how and why cardiovascular disease occurs.
"Our multidisciplinary team will use data from more than 100,000 people and more than 125,000 images," Professor Lewis said.
"This will provide robust estimates of the prevalence and clinical importance of AAC in middle-aged to older adults with and without chronic metabolic diseases."
Other ECU researchers on the project are Dr Cassandra Smith, Dr Zulqarnain Gilani, Dr Nicola Bondonno and Dr Marc Sim.
Professor Lewis said the project is expected to enable a "paradigm shift" in what's understood about how and why cardiovascular disease progresses.
"Ultimately, this will lead to better approaches to target modifiable lifestyle factors, genes and chronic diseases causing cardiovascular hospitalisations and deaths in older people, to create new and better ways to prevent and treat the disease."
