Cardiovascular Biomarkers - Iftikhar J. Kullo

Vascular Diseases Biorepository

Funded by a Marriott Award in Personalized Medicine, the vascular diseases biorepository includes people with common vascular diseases — such as peripheral arterial disease, aortic aneurysm and carotid disease — as well as rare vascular diseases, such as primary pulmonary hypertension and fibromuscular dysplasia.

The biorepository includes DNA, serum, plasma and cell line samples, which are obtained from patients who've been referred for noninvasive arterial ultrasound examinations and lower extremity arterial evaluations. These samples are linked with demographic information, conventional cardiovascular risk factors, and comorbidities ascertained from Mayo Clinic's electronic medical record (EMR) using EMR-based electronic phenotyping algorithms.

The vascular diseases biorepository will enable research into vascular disease biomarkers, promote understanding of biology underlying atherosclerosis, and accelerate the implementation of individualized medicine.

As of May 2011 — two years after the project began — the biorepository has enrolled and collected samples from 2,518 participants.

Current biorepository population statistics are:

• Mean age — 70.9 years, plus or minus 10.6 years.
• Sex — 62.5 percent are men.
• Race — 98 percent are white.
• Diseases — peripheral artery disease (34.2 percent); abdominal aortic aneurysm (21.3 percent); carotid artery stenosis (51.6 percent); fibromuscular dysplasia (6.5 percent).
• Risk factors and comorbidities — hypertension (79.6 percent); diabetes (31.1 percent); dyslipidemia (63.8 percent); heart failure (12.2 percent); stroke (18.4 percent); and chronic kidney disease (20 percent).
• At least one vascular revascularization or surgery — nearly 46 percent.

Mayo Clinic employees can find more information about this biorepository on the Mayo intranet (must be logged in to the Mayo network).