A study from Emory cardiovascular researchers, published recently in a leading health journal, has paved the way for the development of a new cardiovascular reactivity risk score that could better identify and improve how quickly high-risk patients under high stress are diagnosed and begin to receive treatment for heart disease.

The new research was published on Jan. 21 in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA), led by senior authors Arshed Quyyumi, MD, and Viola Vaccarino, MD, PhD, along with lead author Kasra Moazzami, MD. Moazzami and a team of colleagues from Emory University gathered data from 629 individuals from 2011-16, looking at three key ways that the study’s participants responded to a stress test administered in the lab.

Stress tests are designed to mimic the real-world pressure people may face in their day-to-day lives. To replicate those anxiety inducing scenarios in the lab, researchers asked participating patients to deliver a three-minute public presentation on a topic that might typically make them uncomfortable, such as the mistreatment of a family member in a nursing home.

As the participants were speaking, the researchers carefully monitored key changes in their heart activity and blood pressure. This included how the lining inside of the blood vessels responded and how much the patients’ blood vessels tightened.

The results from the overall tests showed how stress-related changes in blood flow and blood vessel function can be directly linked to heart disease.

“Our goal was to combine these three findings into a single risk score,” says Moazzami, MD, MSCR, MPH, assistant professor in the Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. “We wanted to see if the three key changes were connected, and more importantly, if bringing them together could improve our ability to predict risk.”

Source: https://news.emory.edu/stories/2025/01/hs_cardiovascular_risk_score_stress_28-01-2025/story.html