Ellen Woodcock, centre, pictured receiving her award from CSANZ Chair Professor Martin Stiles, left, and President Dr Mayanna Lund, right.
The strength of cardiac research undertaken at University of Otago, Christchurch, was recognised at the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand (CSANZ) awards ceremony in Rotorua late last month, with two researchers picking up major awards for their conference research presentations.
Ellen Woodcock, a Postdoctoral Fellow within the campus’ Department of Māori and Indigenous Health Innovation (MIHI) received the Allied Health Investigator Award, while Department of Medicine (Christchurch Heart Institute) PhD candidate Janny Lau was recognised with the Young Investigator Award.
Ellen was awarded the prize for her paper titled ‘Indexing of left ventricular (LV) mass to account for body habitus in an Aotearoa population’, which focussed on cardiac ultrasound analysis among participants in a community heart study.
“Our study compared indexation approaches for left ventricular (LV) mass among three groups of participants in the Hauora Manawa Community Heart Study, to understand the effect on the detection of LV hypertrophy or excessive enlargement,” Ellen says.
“We found that Māori had a higher LV mass than NZ Europeans when indexed for height, body surface area and fat-free mass, but we also observed that the prevalence of LV hypertrophy in participants above the upper limit of normal for mass was altered. The clinical significance of this change is unclear.”
Janny Lau, centre, pictured receiving her award from CSANZ Chair Professor Martin Stiles, left, and President Dr Mayanna Lund, on the right.
Ellen says she’s grateful to have received the award and thankful for the help of her supervisors, Professor Suzanne Pitama, Professor Gillian Whalley and Dr Luke Wilson.
“We plan to obtain follow-up data focussing on cardiovascular events in the fifteen years since the original study was performed, with the hope of determining which indexing approach best identifies cardiovascular risk,” Ellen says.
Janny says she is honoured to have been chosen for her award and is grateful for the support of her PhD supervisors, Associate Professor Anna Pilbrow, Dr Lynley Lewis, Dr Arielle Sulit, Associate Professor John Pearson and Dr Andree Pearson, for helping with her research paper titled ‘Genetic risks in early-onset cardiovascular diseases’.
The study investigated data from 28 participants recruited into the Christchurch Heart Institute’s Family Heart Study from 2011-2014, using genotyping to compare their polygenic risk scores with over 2500 heart-healthy volunteers and patients who had no premature onset of heart disease.
“Our results showed that people with a strong family history of premature heart disease have a greater burden of common cardiovascular genetic risk variants than patients with heart disease at a later age or those who were heart-healthy,” Janny says.
“We know already that most heart diseases are avoidable if identified early. One day we may be able to use genetics to help identify people at high risk of heart disease early in life, to support development of personalised management strategies and preventative care.”
Kōrero by Lorelei Mason
Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka, Ōtautahi
Research and study in Christchurch for a career in medicine and health science.
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