Personalizing Heart Disease Treatment to Save Lives

Problems with the heart and blood vessels, called cardiovascular diseases, are very common—heart attacks, high blood pressure, and strokes are well-known examples. Although medicines and other treatments are available for many cardiovascular diseases, they remain the leading cause of death worldwide. This is because cardiovascular diseases are extremely complicated. They involve multiple body systems and many types of cells, all interacting in complex ways. Also, cardiovascular diseases are slightly different in each patient, which means a “one-size-fits-all” treatment, like a pill to lower cholesterol, does not always work for everyone. Precision medicine is a personalized approach that could help improve cardiovascular disease treatment by collecting loads of detailed data about each patient’s genes, proteins, and cells. Computers and artificial intelligence are then used to figure out the interactions, find patterns, and predict the best treatments. In short, precision cardiovascular medicine could transform the future of cardiovascular disease treatment, improving and saving thousands of lives.