I think it's really interesting, and I always like to start off with what really prompted your team to investigate the relationship between Fuchs and cardiometabolic disease?

I was at the Fuchs9 International Meeting, uh, in Montreal back in the fall, um, and it's amazing to me, like, when you sit in a meeting, you know, you're absorbing all this information, and then ideas come to you for research and questions, and so that's really what happened.

I was listening to a lecture about the UV exposure and smoking being risk factors for Fuchs dystrophy, um, I guess due to the additional oxidative stress on the mitochondria of the endothelial cells.

And so hearing this just kind of made me wonder about the impact of other cardiometabolic conditions.

You know, there's lots of things that are impacting our population, like diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease, high cholesterol, obesity, things like that.

So I was thinking, you know, if smoking is a risk factor for Fuchs dystrophy, it's possible that these other conditions may also be associated with an increased risk, uh, for Fuchs.

Uh, so [chuckles] while I was sitting in the meeting, I'm texting with Andrew and emailing him, and he's one of our, you know, star University of Toronto medical students who have, uh, who has been working with us on research projects, and we've started brainstorming how we could explore this research question.

Is there a different way that you handle that patient interaction now?