New study links American South Asian religiosity to cardiovascular disease

The Study on Stress, Spirituality, and Health (SSSH), a leading proteomics analysis, suggests that religious beliefs modulate protein expression associated with cardiovascular disease in South Asians in the United States. The research, published by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) in Scientific reports, shows that especially mental conflict significantly changes the impact of unique proteins on the risk of cardiovascular disease (VSV) in American South Asians, a community with a very high percentage of CVS.

This study represents the first proteomics analysis ever performed on protein levels relative to CVD within a U.S. South Asian population, and the first published study to analyze proteomics signatures relative to religion and spirituality in any population.

“Before we can develop the best interventions to reduce CVD differences, we need to understand the biological pathways by which health differences are produced,” says lead researcher and co-senior author of the study, Alexandra Shields, Ph.D., director of Harvard. / MGH Center for Genomics, Vulnerable Populations and Health Differences at the MGH Mongan Institute and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). “As can be seen from this study, psychosocial factors – and especially religious or spiritual struggles – can influence biological processes that lead to CVD in this high-risk population. Spirituality can also serve as a source of resilience and a protective effect. the minority communities experiencing higher levels of CVD also report higher levels of religiosity and spirituality, studies such as the SSSH can help identify new leverage points, such as mentally focused psychotherapy for those in mental distress, which may reduce the risk of CVD for such people . individuals. ‘

Results of the study, which includes 50 participants who developed CVD and 50 gender and age-adjusted controls without CVS from the Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians in America (MASALA) study (100 participants), indicate that there are unique proteins may be expression profiles related to CVD in American South Asian populations, and that these associations may also be affected by religious struggles, in which, for example, individuals experiencing adverse life events feel punished or abandoned by their God, or a crisis it of faith. The MASALA study included 1,164 South Asians recruited from the San Francisco Bay Area and the greater Chicago area and followed for approximately eight years with the aim of investigating factors leading to heart disease among this high-risk ethnic group. . MASALA is one of the original groups participating in SSSH through which this research was conducted.

“Understanding the pathways of this mechanism at the molecular level using proteomics technology is crucial to the development of potential interventions that can help reduce CVV incidence in this population,” said Long H. Ngo, Ph.D. D., lead author and co-director of Biostatistics. in the Division of General Medicine at BIDMC and Associate Professor of Medicine at HMS.

Co-senior author Towia Libermann, Ph.D., director of Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Center at BIDMC, adds: “The types of blood-based protein biomarkers used in this study are particularly effective in assessing CVD risk because they contain clinical information about the risk of disease and are the most commonly used molecules for diagnostic applications. ‘