Dr Carolyn Lam:                Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the Journal and its editors. We're your co-hosts of Circulation on the Run. I'm Dr Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore. Dr Greg Hundley:             And I am Greg Hundley, also associate editor from VCU Health Systems in Richmond, Virginia. Dr Carolyn Lam:                So, have you ever wondered in patients with atrial fibrillation and stable coronary artery disease beyond a year of coronary stenting, can you safely just continue on oral anticoagulation without antiplatelet therapy? Well, if you've ever wondered that ... I sure have. I'm sure you have too, Greg. Our feature paper this week does discuss this, so you have to stay tuned. But for now, Greg, what are your picks from this week's issue? Dr Greg Hundley:             I've got a couple to discuss. The first is Patrick Hsieh from Taipei, Taiwan, and really is evaluating the gut microbiota and how that affects cardiac repair after myocardial infarction. I mean, who would've thought to chase an idea like this? But what this investigative team did is they had mice, so this was a basic science experiment, and they treated them seven days prior to ligation of their left anterior descending artery that would induce a myocardial infarction. They treated them seven days prior with ampicillin, metronidazole, neomycin, and vancomycin. What were they trying to do? Totally obliterate any bacterial load within their GI system. Then, they ligated that coronary artery, and at 21 days, they looked at histopathologically what was happening.                                                 And you know what they found? Those where they wiped out the bacterial load, they had increased cardiovascular events. And importantly, myocardial rupture was very high in this group of mice. Also those mice, they had reduced heart rate, and mechanistically what had occurred is there was a reduction in our immune monocytes that were trying to infiltrate the peri-infarct. They weren't there. They were not in those peri-infarct zones. And so, the thought here is that removal of the favorable microbiota in the gut can actually be harmful in the setting of myocardial infarction. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Fascinating. So, microbiome as our pals. But wait a minute. I mean, how can you say it's from elimination of the microbiome versus some kind of effect of the antibiotics itself? Dr Greg Hundley:             Yeah, that's a great question, Carolyn. The way they did this is they took another group of animals, and they supplemented them with lactobacillus probiotic, like the stuff we get in the grocery store. And those animals, they did not suffer any of the adverse cardiovascular effects. So, it really points to an important role of our gut microbiota. You know, and what do they do? They basically ferment these carbohydrates that we ingest, and produce short chain fatty acids that are a substrate for these mononuclear cells to help infiltrate those infarct zones. So, really exciting basic science question that this group examined. Dr Carolyn Lam:                I love that you picked a basic science paper, and I love that you made even me understand it so well. Okay, but what I have is a clinical trial. So, it's the REDUCE-MVI trial, which is the first randomized trial comparing maintenance treatment with ticagrelor or prasugrel after a primary PCI. So, this is from Dr van Royen and colleagues. They're from Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands. Basically, they figured that despite successful restoration of epicardial vessel patency with primary PCI, coronary microvascular injury does occur in a large proportion of STEMI patients, and of course, adversely affects outcomes. Now, ticagrelor has been reported to increase plasma adenosine levels, which may have a protective effect on the microcirculation. So, the