Our molecular data elucidates early molecular signatures to detect cardiovascular diseases at an earliest stage
Sushant Kumar
Founder-Genefitletics|IEAlumni|Built Asia’s first disease detect platform to early detect metabolic diseases & cancer|Transforming human biochemistry into molecular data platform|Biohacking & Longevity
Abstract
Cardiovascular diseases are the number one killer in men & women globally. India alone accounts for 31% of global deaths due to cardiovascular disease. Every 42 seconds someone has a heart attack. Today we have more people dying of this vascular dysfunction than any other reason in the world.
Science & technologies have taken a leap & bound & we now clearly understand the pathophysiology behind onset & progression of cardiovascular diseases. However, we are still facing a cardiovascular disease epidemic. The problem is not awareness, but the current healthcare community is focussing on the wrong target & have failed to bridge the gap between clinical discoveries & real world applications.
The Cholesterol dogma
Every healthcare practitioner blames high levels of cholesterol as the primary cause of cardiovascular diseases & its associated mortality. The current healthcare system is stuck with this dogma for decades. This goes back to 1958 when a researcher Ancel Keys did a study on 22 countries to find out the real reason for the onset of cardiovascular diseases. He found that in 7 out of these 22 countries, high cholesterol was associated with cardiovascular diseases. He fit this hypothesis & told that high fat causes heart disease. What was not appreciated was the fact that it was bad fats such as trans fat, not high quality saturated fats which caused heart disease. For decades, conventional healthcare practitioners believed that it was excess cholesterol which was the reason for increased incidence of cardiovascular disease & adopted interventions that could suppress cholesterol levels.?
The biggest truth which was missed was that cholesterol was present in the arteries to cause heart disease but to prevent it. The autopsy of people who died of cardiovascular disease found that there was waxy material- cholesterol in the arteries which made them conclude that cholesterol caused heart disease. It is like blaming the ambulance for the death which has come to pick up the dead body of the person who died due to an unfortunate accident. In fact this waxy material was there in the arteries to counter the inflammation which caused heart disease as inflammation damages the blood vessels & inhibits nitric oxide production.
The microbiome-heart love affair
Research over the last 2 decades has found that trillions of microbes living on & inside our body- right from top of our digestive tube- mouth to the end point of digestive tract- gut have a larger role to play in our systemic health. The role of microbiome goes beyond pre-digestion/pre-processing & digestion & directly impacts our brain health, immune health, skin health & even heart health. The chronic inflammation triggered by gut or oral microbes secreting pro-inflammatory secondary metabolites such as Phenylacetylglutamine, Lipopolysaccharides, TMAO, Gingipain & more could lead to oxidative stress, adiposity & plaque deposition & rupture causing cardiovascular disease. Translating this research in real world application needs transitioning to molecular data to elucidate the underlying molecular? biochemical processes triggering system inflammation that causes heart disease.?
The ignored inflammatory signals & biomarkers underlying cardiovascular diseases?
Cardiovascular diseases, leading cause of mortality, is asymptomatic & is detected at late stage when arteries are filled up with plaque in a range of 70% to 95% blockage. What follows next is pharmaceutical interventions such as cholesterol inhibitors & statins that suppress cholesterol levels &/or operative procedures to clear the plaque. The pharmaceutical approach has counterintuitive & inflammatory cascading effects impacting cell membrane structure & fluidity & directly disrupting nitric oxide production. We know that nitric oxide is a signalling molecule that dilates the blood vessels, regulates blood pressure & prevents plaque deposition in arteries. Disruption the production of nitric oxide is one of the core reason for onset of cardiovascular diseases
The inflammatory cascades caused by our gut & oral microbiome & inflammatory pathways activated by them as a result of microbes synthesising various substrates in the food we eat could lead to plaque deposition underneath the lining of blood vessels, resulting in loss of elasticity of blood vessels. The blood vessel becomes inflamed & white blood starts sticking to the blood vessels causing oxidative stress & immune dysfunction. This further damages blood vessels.
Certain standard of care blood plasma level investigations such as C-reactive protein, homocysteine levels, oxidised lipoproteins,? ferritin & urinary isoprostanes could detect the progression of heart disease at an advanced stage of plaque deposition. However, the current healthcare system never looks at these investigations although measuring these investigations & recommending pharmaceutical approaches could help just to suppress the oxidative stress to some extent but not eradicate the damage done over years of systemic inflammation
The revolution in cardiovascular health- Early detect test for cardiovascular disease
What if we could identify molecular signals causing system inflammation & oxidative stress- those caused by gut & oral microbiome years before cardiovascular diseases develop & progresses?
This was our starting point at Genfitletics to address this growing epidemic of cardiovascular disease. Since the inception of Genefitletics 6 years back, our focus has been to move from non-actionable healthcare delivery data to actually collect “never captured” molecular data in order to deeply understand onset & progression of most hard to detect metabolic disease where cardiovascular diseases tops the list.
Thanks to our 6 years of extensive research on human microbiome- oral & gut & commercial application of our full body biochemistry solution- ORAHYG PRO, we have identified specific molecular functions & pathways that trigger system inflammation & oxidative stress at molecular level, causing harm to blood vessels & plaque deposition & rupture.?
Our recently concluded internal validation study, collecting & mining 10 billion molecular data points & 36 million plus microbial molecular features, have elucidated early molecular signatures & pathways that triggers onset & progression of cardiovascular diseases. Measuring & quantifying these biochemical signatures has enabled us to identify early onset of cardiovascular diseases before the symptoms or signals reflect in the plasma level investigations.
We used the Vector Matrix & Single value decomposition method to develop a machine learning mathematical model that could early detect the onset of cardiovascular disease. We used this complex & comprehensive mathematical technique in two steps
1) Scientifically classifying these huge mammoth molecular datasets from subjects into discovery & validation groups
2) Constructing & validating the model on the discovery group using multivariate statistical & regression models with 98% specificity & P value of < 0.05
The model so developed was revalidated on the validation group with P value of < 0.05.
We also run statistical analyzes on the pathways scores & activity level differences of between discovery & validation groups with respect to different symptomatic conditions- Oral Inflammation, Sexual Dysfunction & Vascular Dysfunction to further verify the efficacy of our model. All 31 pathways had P value <0.05
Based on measuring each of these pathways, our recommendation engine maps these pathways with our proprietary nutritional ontology database that aims at feeding our microbiome with right food substrates that suppress pro-inflammatory functions & promotes beneficial metabolites production to regulate & optimise our heart health
Final words
Cardiovascular diseases are absolutely preventable provided we move away from cholesterol dogma, fix our oral & gut microbiome & focus on solutions that could measure molecular signals well before the symptoms show up in plasma level investigations.
Our 6 years research & commercial application of our Industry’ first full body biochemistry solutions has enabled us to validate our scientific research & bridge the gap between clinical discoveries & real life applications. Our soon to be launched early detect test for cardiovascular disease is just a starting point to actually deliver solutions that can prevent the onset of cardiovascular diseases
Stay tuned- we will be coming up with a full blown commercial product in the later part of the next financial year.
We are hopeful our solutions can help humanity live better & healthy life
Citations?