Sep 11, 2026 · 26 min · 8 segments
Hear about a new universal definition of myocardial infarction, updated heart failure guidelines, and other clinical highlights in this interview with Tomasz Guzik, MD, PhD, chair of this year's…
Tomasz GuzikGuestJennifer AbbasiHostOne thing that struck me as I was looking at the research was that several papers presented at the meeting actually had to do with dementia risk.
Before we get into some of the specific data, can you talk to me a little bit about why brain health is a big topic in cardiology these days?
The first aspect is that we are understanding better and better that the presence of cardiovascular disease is systemic.
So while the disease is in the heart, while the disease is in the vessels, it's also present in blood vessels in the brain, and it therefore, it affects development of dementia and potentially other neurological complications beyond obviously stroke that has been followed and known for a long time.
And, uh, this is particularly important in relation to risk factors such as hypertension, which appears to be one of the principal components of something called small vessel disease that leads directly to dementia symptoms and impairment of cognitive, uh, function in our patients.
And moreover, I have to say, our group has published a few years ago a paper showing how hypertension actually affects structures in the brain that can be measured in magnetic resonance imaging in a very large population of UK Biobank.
And then there is, of course, the other arm of this reflex, how brain is affecting the cardiovascular disease.
And again, in the recent years, we have learned that this is an enormous interaction.
And when the brain learns about cardiovascular disease as it develops, it learns about heart failure, it learns about atherosclerosis appearing in our blood vessels, and it reacts and responds.
And in some way, I think that we've always known that we use only very small fraction of our brain for usual tasks, and we were always asking the question, "What's the rest doing?" I think it's generally running everything, including our cardiovascular system.
Okay, so along those lines, the first study we'll discuss is the China Rural Hypertension Control Program trial.
This randomized trial tested a four-year intervention in participants with hypertension in more than three hundred villages in China.
The blood pressure goals were less than a hundred thirty systolic and less than eighty diastolic in the villages that were randomly assigned to receive the intervention.
The new data presented at the meeting were the follow-up data on dementia incidents three years after the trial concluded.
They invested a lot of effort into training the GPs, nurses, and everybody else.
Uh, but, uh, while the sort of absolute reductions of blood pressure were not maintained to the same level, they translated to significant reduction of dementia occurrence.
One thing that struck me as I was looking at the research was that several papers presented at the meeting actually had to do with dementia risk.
Before we get into some of the specific data, can you talk to me a little bit about why brain health is a big topic in cardiology these days?
The first aspect is that we are understanding better and better that the presence of cardiovascular disease is systemic.
So while the disease is in the heart, while the disease is in the vessels, it's also present in blood vessels in the brain, and it therefore, it affects development of dementia and potentially other neurological complications beyond obviously stroke that has been followed and known for a long time.
And, uh, this is particularly important in relation to risk factors such as hypertension, which appears to be one of the principal components of something called small vessel disease that leads directly to dementia symptoms and impairment of cognitive, uh, function in our patients.
And moreover, I have to say, our group has published a few years ago a paper showing how hypertension actually affects structures in the brain that can be measured in magnetic resonance imaging in a very large population of UK Biobank.
And then there is, of course, the other arm of this reflex, how brain is affecting the cardiovascular disease.
And again, in the recent years, we have learned that this is an enormous interaction.
And when the brain learns about cardiovascular disease as it develops, it learns about heart failure, it learns about atherosclerosis appearing in our blood vessels, and it reacts and responds.
And in some way, I think that we've always known that we use only very small fraction of our brain for usual tasks, and we were always asking the question, "What's the rest doing?" I think it's generally running everything, including our cardiovascular system.
Okay, so along those lines, the first study we'll discuss is the China Rural Hypertension Control Program trial.
This randomized trial tested a four-year intervention in participants with hypertension in more than three hundred villages in China.
The blood pressure goals were less than a hundred thirty systolic and less than eighty diastolic in the villages that were randomly assigned to receive the intervention.
The new data presented at the meeting were the follow-up data on dementia incidents three years after the trial concluded.
They invested a lot of effort into training the GPs, nurses, and everybody else.
Uh, but, uh, while the sort of absolute reductions of blood pressure were not maintained to the same level, they translated to significant reduction of dementia occurrence.
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