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Approved research

Sex hormones affect heart rhythm and function through inflammation.

Principal Investigator: Professor Hong Sun
Approved Research ID: 56068
Approval date: June 24th 2020

Lay summary

According to the results of WHO research, cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the main cause of death in the world. Many studies have shown that the risk of CVD in young women is significantly lower than that in men of the same age, but this advantage will gradually disappear after menopause. Sex hormones are one of the reasons for this gender difference, but the mechanism is unclear. Inflammation is a vital part of pathological processes in CVD. Some studies found that male patients had higher inflammatory state than female patients in CVD. These suggest that sex hormones may regulate inflammation. Therefore, this research aims to confirm whether sex hormones can affect heart function through inflammation. In this project, we are planning to finish the analysis of clinical data from UK Biobank in about 6 months, in order to find out the significant role of inflammation in CVD. We hope to predict the incidence of CVD based on gender or sex hormone levels.