The team at the Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR) Unit at Royal Brompton Hospital is investigating and treating early vascular disease. This follows the publication of a paper on the findings of the CORDA Asymptomatic Subject Plaque Assessment Research (CASPAR) project.
CORDA research fellow Dr Niall Keenan has worked with colleagues at the Department of Computing at Imperial College, including Professor Guang-Zhong Yang, to look at the atheroma burden of normal healthy volunteers aged 20 to 70 years old. Their results show that atheroma is progressive in its earliest stages throughout life, and that patients with coronary artery disease can be distinguished from those who do not have it by the aged appearance of their carotid arteries.
Dr Keenan has also collaborated with Professor Dorian Haskard from Hammersmith Hospital in scanning patients with inflammatory conditions. These include arthritis in which atheroma is thought to be accelerated, and has shown that carotid wall thickening is significantly advanced for age. These results suggest that assessing wall thickening is a valuable technique for identifying early atheroma.