This week, please join authors Tatsuhiko Naito and Kosuke Inoue as well as Associate Editor Wendy Post as they discuss the article "Genetic Risk of Primary Aldosteronism and Its Contribution to Hypertension: A Cross-Ancestry Meta-Analysis of Genome-Wide Association Study." Dr. Greg Hundley: Welcome listeners, to this April 4th discussion of Circulation on the Run. I am one of your co-hosts, Dr. Greg Hundley, Associate Editor, Director of the Pauley Heart Center at VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia. Dr. Peder Myhre: And I'm Dr. Peder Myhre from Akershus University Hospital and the University of Oslo in Norway. So Greg, today we have the feature paper, discussing the genetic risk of primary aldosteronism and its contribution to hypertension. So this is such an interesting topic and av very important cost on hypertension. And in this paper, they use cross-ancestry meta-analysis from GWAS studies to assess this very interesting discussion. But first, Greg, I have a paper that comes to us from the DELIVER trial, and it is about dapagliflozin to patients with HFpEF, and assessing the association with the duration of the heart failure. So Greg, it is important to understand how the effects of new treatments vary by the duration of heart failure. Because on one hand, physicians may think that a patient who has longer standing heart failure represents a stable survivor where new treatment is unnecessary. On the other hand, the view has been expressed that patients with long-standing heart failure may have more advanced disease, and there may come a point where they no longer respond to or tolerate the addition of new therapies, particularly because of hypotension, kidney dysfunctional and electrolyte abnormality. So the investigators from the DELIVER trial, led by corresponding all author John McMurray from University of Glasgow, therefore, aimed to assess the efficacy and safety of the SGLT2 inhibitor dapagliflozin, according to the duration of heart failure with EF above 40%. So that is mildly reduced or preserved. Dr. Greg Hundley: Wow, Peder, very timely, very timely article. So what did they find? Dr. Peder Myhre: So Greg, the authors categorized patients by duration of heart failure, one category less than six months, and then six to 12 months, and then one to two years, two to five years, and finally, more than five years. And longer duration heart failure patients were older, and more comorbid with worse symptoms, and the rate of the primary outcome increased with heart failure duration. And so, the benefit of dapagliflozin was consistent across heart failure duration categories with hazard ratios 0.67, 0.78, 0.81, 0.97, and 0.78. And that gives a P4 interaction of 0.41. So the absolute benefit was therefore since there was no P4 interaction, greatest among those with highest risk, and that it was the longest duration heart failure. So there was a number needed to create for heart failure above five years of 24, versus 32 for those with the shortest duration of heart failure. And the authors therefore conclude, that even in patients with long-standing heart failure and generally mild symptoms cannot be considered stable, and it is not too late for such patients to benefit from an SGLT2 inhibitor. Dr. Greg Hundley: Ah, very practical information, Peder, beautiful description. Well Peder, this next paper comes to us evaluating low density lipoprotein cholesterol. And as you know, low density lipoprotein cholesterol is an important causal risk factor for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. However, a sizable proportion of middle-aged individuals have not developed coronary atherosclerosis as assessed by the presence of coronary artery calcification. Now whether the presence of coronary artery calcification modifies the association of LDL cholesterol with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk, well, that's unknown. So these authors, led by the corresponding author of Martin Mortensen from Aarhus University