A manuscript on cardiovascular remodeling by Loren Wold, PhD, FAHA, FAPS, director of biomedical research and associate professor at The Ohio State University College of Nursing, was selected as one of the most important manuscripts published in 2012 by editors of the journal Circulation: Heart Failure.
Following is a summary of the manuscript "Cardiovascular remodeling in response to long-term exposure to fine particulate matter air pollution":
Air pollution is a widespread environmental health hazard occurring in many industrialized societies. Current evidence suggests that exposure to air pollution can cause significant cardiovascular risk even within a short time period, and that these effects increase with time. The present study used a mouse model of air pollution exposure to better understand increased cardiovascular risk after exposure to air pollution over a lifespan. Mice were exposed to air pollution or filtered air, 6 h/d, 5 d/wk for 9 months, which is a large portion of the lifespan of a mouse. The mice exposed to air pollution developed both systolic and diastolic dysfunction, as assessed using echocardiography. Interestingly, this dysfunction was evident at the cellular level, as cardiomyocytes isolated from mice exposed to air pollution had decreased function that is translatable to the dysfunction found at the whole heart level. Examination of heart tissue from mice exposed to air pollution also revealed molecular markers of hypertrophy leading to adverse ventricular remodeling. This study showed that long-term exposure to environmentally relevant concentrations of air pollution resulted in cardiovascular dysfunction evident at both the whole heart and cellular level.
Conclusions: Long-term exposure to environmentally relevant concentrations of PM2.5 resulted in a cardiac phenotype consistent with incipient heart failure.
