UF researchers receive $15 million grant to study heart disease in women

The Department of Defense awarded two UF cardiovascular researchers nearly a $15 million grant to study heart disease in women.

Dr. Carl Pepine, 76, and Eileen Handberg, 58, wrote a grant that answered the Department of Defense’s call for heart disease research focused on women.

“(The Department of Defense) indicates that the growth of women in the active duty military is actually the most rapidly growing segment of their population,” Pepine said. “That’s part of the reason for their concern.”

The researchers started working on the grant around September of last year. They received notice of funding on Sept. 15, Pepine said.

The researchers will conduct a four-year clinical trial called the “Women’s IschemiA TReatment Reduces Events In Non-ObstRuctive CAD,” or WARRIOR, to explore whether aggressive treatment will reduce stroke, heart attack, heart failure, hospitalization and death in women who have non-obstructive coronary artery disease.

Women with non-obstructive CAD do not have clogged arteries but rather, heart symptoms as if there were significant blockages, Handberg said.

The money will fund the trial’s recruitment, screening, enrollment, treatment and observation, Pepine said. A total of 4,422 women with non-obstructive heart disease will be recruited from Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, mainly located in Florida, Handberg said. Recruitment for study subjects will begin in January 2018.

A randomized group of half the participants will get intensive medical therapy and the other half, the reference group, will not receive treatment but will remain monitored.

Intensive therapy will consist of high doses of cholesterol-lowering medication, blood pressure medication and low doses of aspirin, Handberg said. These medications are used in high-risk patients for heart disease, heart failure, and data shows that they reduce the risk of cardiovascular symptoms, she said.

“Most of these women would not be treated with this combination of therapy because people don't feel like they have significant disease,” Handberg said.

For years, non-obstructive CAD was believed to be a benign syndrome, which isn’t the case according to new findings, Pepine said.

Since these patients weren’t showing significant blockage of their arteries in screenings, care providers would dismiss them despite their cardiovascular symptoms, he said.

Between 60 and 70 percent of women who show signs of disease, like chest pain, and who are referred to further screening, don’t end up having obstructive disease, Pepine said. These women have symptoms but not enough to warrant intervention like surgery, Handberg said.

The study’s findings will be used in the best ways to treat non-obstructive CAD in the future.

“This trial is so important because we feel like that if they are aggressively treated that we have a good chance of showing reduction in symptoms and events,” Handberg said.