The researchers believe it is possible that every condition may have a unique retinal variation profile. Variations in the retinal vascular pattern also reflect the development of other ocular and systemic diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy and stroke. These findings may also be useful in identifying propensity to other diseases. In particular, we found that these common genetic regions are involved in processes related to MI severity and recovery.' Four of these regions are known to be involved in cardiovascular disease genetics. 'We wondered if the Df-MI association was influenced by shared biology, so we looked at the genetics of Df and found nine genetic regions driving retinal vascular branching patterns.

The improvement of our model was even higher if we added a score related to the genetic propensity of developing MI', Ms Villaplana-Velasco said. 'Strikingly, we discovered that our model was able to better classify participants with low or high MI risk in UKB when compared with established models that only include demographic data. The model included Df as well as traditional clinical factors, such as age, sex, systolic blood pressure, body mass index and smoking status to calculate personalized MI risk. The researchers then developed a model that was able to predict MI risk prediction by studying UKB participants who had experienced an MI event after collection of their retinal images. Ms Ana Villaplana-Velasco, PhD student at the Usher and Roslin Institutes, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK We found that lower Df, simplified vessel branching patterns, is related to CAD and hence MI.' UKB includes demographical, epidemiological, clinical, imaging and genotyping data from over 500,000 participants across UK. First, we studied the branching patterns of the retinal vasculature by calculating a measure named fractal dimension (Df) from data available from the UK Biobank (UKB). Given that retinal imaging is a non-invasive technique, we decided to investigate the health benefits we could obtain from these images. We already knew that variations in the vasculature of the retina might offer insights into our health.

The discovery could lead to a simple screening process where an MI risk could be calculated when a person undergoes a routine eye test, researchers will tell the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics today (Monday). Jun 13 2022Ĭombining information about the pattern of blood vessels in the retina with genetic data can enable accurate prediction of an individual's risk of coronary artery disease (CAD) and its potentially fatal outcome, myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack.

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