AHA Scientific Sessions 2026 AbstractNov 9, 2026, 01:24 GMT

Shape of heart arteries linked to future heart failure

Over 10 years, the higher-risk half had 1.68 times the heart failure rate at any given time compared with the lower-risk half.

Paper by Mendel Lebowitz, Gourav Modanwal, Pushkar Mutha, +7Anant Madabhushi · Emory University

A heart with branching, curved coronary arteries sits beside thick- and thin-walled ventricular cross-sections and a small group of people.

Our read

Biomarkers

Studied:: Cohort study of 37,200 patients with non-contrast CT scans, 10 years, against the low-risk group (Independent replication, registered NCT04075162)
What changed:: Incident heart failure was higher in the high-risk group than the low-risk group (HR of 1.68)
The catch:: Clinical outcomes from preventive care guided by the score were not measured

Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News

Paper

The 46,499 people in the CLARIFY registry were included in a retrospective observational analysis of computed tomography scans taken without contrast dye. An artificial intelligence model traced the arteries supplying the heart. Researchers measured their bends, curves and spatial complexity to calculate an artery-shape score.

They developed a heart failure risk model in 9,299 people and tested it in a separate group of 37,200. They divided the test group into halves based on predicted risk. The higher-risk half had a higher rate of heart failure over 10 years. The score remained associated with heart failure after accounting for age, sex, smoking history, high blood pressure, diabetes, race and ethnicity.

Why it matters

For heart failure, an age-related disease, the findings suggest a possible way to assess future risk using existing scans without additional imaging.

Caveats

The retrospective analysis could not rule out other differences between people with different artery shapes that also affected heart failure risk. Reported as a conference abstract, the analysis did not test whether using the score to guide preventive care improved outcomes.