Thank you for saving lives Heart-First

These are just some of the breakthroughs you have made possible.

Every day, eight babies are born with congenital heart disease in Australia. Some are born with just half a heart – and if they survive, they suffer complex health problems and lead a life of uncertainty about their future. Your support has helped launch a world-first exercise study that will help improve the quality of life of these babies as they grow into adulthood. “It’s a hope for a bright future that we just didn’t have in the past, and I think that’s the most empowering thing science can do,” says lead researcher Assoc Prof Rachael Cordina.

Research made possible by you has made a world-first breakthrough discovery, linking high cholesterol with an increased risk of dementia for the first time. The research could see doctors soon be able to calculate a person’s risk of dementia by testing their cholesterol levels through an inexpensive and easy blood test. Lead researcher Dr Ashish Misra said this discovery is not only about extending a person’s life but giving them a better quality of life. “If we can classify someone as high risk by checking their blood work for high cholesterol in their 50s, then we can look at their diet as a way of managing and even reducing their risk of dementia.”

Despite the huge impact cardiovascular disease has on everyday lives, we still do not understand why it develops and progresses differently depending on the person. You, and people like you, have helped us to purchase a high-tech mass spectrometer system and launch our cutting-edge Fluxomics Centre, the first in Australia devoted to cardiovascular disease and at the very heart of our vision of personalised medicine. “Thanks to you, we will be able to design better treatments because we will have deeper knowledge of how and why cardiovascular disease develops, and how and why medicines do and don’t work,” says head of the Fluxomics Centre Dr Sergey Tumanov.