Hello, round your health readers! Today we report on yet another way that artificial intelligence could improve healthcare. It helps identify patients to undergo ultrasound to look for structural heart problems. There is also new research into how neurons are equipped with a “backup battery.” This is a discovery that could shape new treatments for neurological conditions.
With AI, ECG can find structural heart problems
Artificial intelligence (AI) can turn common physician office tests into screening tools to detect structural problems in patients' minds, researchers reported in nature.
A publicly available AI tool called eChonext analyzes normal ECG data to identify patients who should have an echocardiogram (non-invasive ultrasound) looking for valve disease, muscle tissue thickening, and other structural defects that can impair heart function.
“We were all taught in medical schools that we couldn't detect structural heart disease from an electrocardiogram,” said research leaders at Dr. Vavalos at Columbia University and Pierre Elias at the University of Surgeons in a statement.
“We believe ECG Plus AI has the potential to create an entirely new screening paradigm.”
Echonext uses cheaper ECGs to figure out who needs more expensive ultrasound, he said.
When 13 cardiologists reviewed a total of 3,200 ECGs, they detected structural heart problems with an accuracy rate of approximately 64% compared to the 77% accuracy rate of Echonext, the researchers found.
The tool was then used to review previous ECGs from nearly 85,000 patients. Based on these ECGs, the patient's physician sent 4,100 of them to acquire an echocardiogram. However, Echonext has identified an additional 3,400 patients as high risk and requires ultrasound examination.
If these ECGs were obtained, AI was not available, so many of the additional patients may have suffered from undiagnosed, potentially serious structural heart disease, the researchers said.
“We can't treat patients we don't know,” Elias said. “With our technology, we could turn the estimated 400 million ECGs carried out worldwide this year into 400 million ECGs, screening for structural heart disease and providing life-saving treatments at the most appropriate time.”
Structural heart disease worldwide affects 64 million people with heart failure and 75 million people with valvular disease, exceeding $100 billion a year in the United States alone, the researchers said.
Some brain cells have a backup battery
Neurons, neurons that transmit information to and from the brain, are equipped with “backup batteries” that kick in to keep the brain moving during periods of metabolic stress, the researchers found.
Traditionally, brain cells, called glial cells, were thought to serve as a “energy warehouse” for neurons, conserving the sugar form known as glycogen and supplying fuel as needed.
“But we know that neurons themselves can store glycogen and break it down when pressure is applied,” Yale School of Medicine research leader Milind Singh said in a statement.
“It's like discovering that your car is a hybrid. It's not just relying on gas stations, but you're carrying an emergency battery all the time.”
Their discovery is C. It was performed during an experiment using a microscopic roundworm called elegans and a fluorescent sensor that glows when cells break down sugar.
The findings could form new treatments for neural conditions in which energy disorders such as stroke, neurodegeneration and epilepsy play a role, the researchers said in the PNA.
The team found that glycogen-dependent energy production of neurons is particularly important when mitochondria (its major energy plant) is impaired, such as when oxygen supply is limited.
Under these conditions, glycogen acts as a rapid access fuel source and helps neurons stay active in the event that other systems may stall, the researchers said.
“That flexibility may be important in the way the brain maintains functioning and responds to stress,” Yale senior researcher Daniel Colon Ramos said in a statement.
“This research opens a new pathway for shaping our understanding of brain energy metabolism and exploring ways to protect and support the neural function of disease.”
