Center Research Assistants Present Posters at the Annual Weill Department of Medicine Research Retreat

On Friday, November 1st, several Center research assistants (RAs) presented abstracts at the Department of Medicine (DOM) Research Retreat. Read about two of our RAs, Megan Willkens and Anju Ogyu and their studies below! 

Megan Willkens: 

Megan presented a poster titled “Incidence and progression of diastolic dysfunction (DD) in people with HIV in Tanzania: a comparative cohort.” She has worked with her PI Dr. Robert Peck and Dr. Saidi Kapiga for over two years and has assisted with studies from Weill NYC and Weill Bugando in Tanzania. This poster presented an analysis of data from a study from the Mwanza HIV and CVD cohort, which is a prospective longitudinal cohort study of 500 people living with HIV and 500 HIV-uninfected participants. There were three key findings from the study: diastolic dysfunction incidence did not differ by HIV status, echocardiographic diastolic dysfunction markers improved after ART initiation in people living with HIV, and efforts to prevent diastolic heart failure in Africa must focus on addressing traditional risk factors while also examining non-traditional risk factors like anemia and manual labor.  

Anju Ogyu:  

Anju has also been at the Center for over a year, and presented her poster titled “Left ventricular hypertrophy among Black adults in a low-income country: the Haiti Cardiovascular Disease Cohort Study”. She was mentored by the PIs of the study, Dr. Margaret McNairy from Weill Cornell and Dr. Jean Pape from GHESKIO in Haiti.  Her poster focused on left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), which is a sign of end-organ dysfunction and a strong independent predictor of cardiovascular disease. In this study, performance of electrocardiograms criteria were evaluated against echocardiogram definition of LVH. Among high-risk participants who received an echocardiogram, 39% had LVH. Older age, lower educational level attainment, higher blood pressure and being antihypertensive was associated with LVH on univariate analysis. All ECG criteria had high specificity but low sensitivity. 

Picture: (left to right) Megan Willkens and Catherine Bennett at the DOM Retreat

Article by Flavia Scott