Researchers from the University of Minnesota Medical School investigated the sex differences among patients with cardiac sarcoidosis, a multisystem, granulomatous disorder, according to a news release from the university.
The study was published Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association.
The study involved 324 patients — 163 females and 161 males — all with histologically proven sarcoidosis and suspected cardiac involvement. Some key findings from the study are that:
- female patients had a greater prevalence of chest pain and palpitations than male patients
- female patients had less cardiac involvement from cardiac sarcoidosis than male patients
- both male and female patients had similar long-term incidence of all-cause death or significant ventricular arrhythmia
“The findings make a strong argument for the routine and systematic inclusion of sex-specific analyses in sarcoidosis research,” Chetan Shenoy, MBBS, MS, Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine’s Cardiovascular Division at the U of M Medical School. “Such practices could eventually lead to an improved understanding of sex differences in the diagnosis, treatment and prognostication of patients with suspected cardiac sarcoidosis and promote improved outcomes in both sexes.”
Shenoy says the next step would be to investigate these sex differences further in a larger multicenter study of patients with suspected cardiac sarcoidosis assessed by cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging. Shenoy recently received a grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to investigate the risk stratification of patients with cardiac sarcoidosis using cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging, and he is also seeking additional funding for work on cardiac sarcoidosis.
