Evaluating Cardiac Function in Patients With Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Summary
Dystrophin associated heart dysfunction is a leading cause of death in patients with Duchenne and Becker Muscular dystrophy (DMD/BMD) and Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy carriers (MDC); however, the evolution of heart dysfunction is not well-understood. The central objectives of this proposal are to elucidate this evolution of heart dysfunction and identify measures from cardiac MRI images that can predict death or significant heart disease in patients with DMD/BMD/MDC. This study will create a large clinical and cardiac MRI registry of dystrophin associated heart dysfunction, will utilize advanced image analysis techniques, including deep learning neural networks, to comprehensively evaluate every patient, and will create a risk toolkit accessible to clinicians around the world; this proposal has the potential to improve the quality of life in patients with dystrophin associated heart dysfunction by allowing for earlier and more intensive therapy in patients with severe disease and by identifying surrogate outcome measures for use in therapeutic trials.
Description
Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy (DMD/BMD) are devastating diseases with no cure resulting in loss of ambulation, respiratory failure, cardiomyopathy, and premature death. Dystrophin associated cardiomyopathy (defined here as CM) is the leading cause of death in DMD/BMD, and an under-studied concern in DMD and BMD mutation carriers (MDC). CM progression is variable and poorly described in the current era. There are no blood or imaging biomarkers that can predict the pace of progression or the risk of early mortality. More importantly, there are no established cardiac outcome measures. No…