Improving assessment of cardiovascular risk in children and young adults

2017 Future Leader Fellowship

Years funded: 2018-2021

Strong evidence exists that the roots of heart disease begin to form in childhood. While premature birth or high blood pressure in childhood lead to a higher risk of cardiovascular problems in adulthood, it is still unclear how to best predict and prevent these problems. Children with repaired congenital heart disease (CHD) also have a high risk of suffering ‘older adult-type’ heart disease as young adults.

This project will help address these problems via major advances to the methods used to detect and understand cardiovascular risk in children and young adults.

While we currently rely on measurements of arm blood pressure, ‘central pressure’ (experienced by the heart) is known to be a better measure of cardiovascular risk. In the KidCoreBP study conducted at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Dr Jonathan Mynard is developing a novel technology allowing non-invasive measurement of central pressure in children for the first time.

Dr Mynard is also developing a clinical ultrasound, MRI and central pressure analysis software package to enable widespread application of state-of-the-art assessments of heart-arterial interactions for the first time.

Dr Mynard will apply these methods in landmark studies of:

1. children and young adults from all around Australia,
2. ex-premature young adults and
3. at-risk groups of patients with repaired CHD, creating an evidence-base for new approaches to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease in Australia and around the world.

This project is co-funded with NHMRC - National Health and Medical Research Council.