Learning how to use genetics to understand the extremes of exercise-induced cardiac remodelling

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About the talk: Exercise training has a powerful influence on cardiac structure and function and yet even within teams of elite athletes there is marked individual variation. Could it be that genetic influences are accentuated by the haemodynamic stressors of exercise and that athletes could provide the perfect platform for understanding inherited influences on cardiac function?Andre La Gerche leads the world’s largest and most comprehensive study looking at athletic heart remodelling. In collaboration with partners in Belgium and Sydney, we have recently been exploring the influence of rare variants and common polymorphisms on cardiac phenotype in athletes and on the clinical consequences associated with athlete’s heart. 

Speaker

  • Associate Professor Andre La Gerche

    Baker Heart & Diabetes Institute

    André completed a PhD at St Vincent’s / University of Melbourne and 4 years of post-doctoral research at the University Hospital of Leuven, Belgium. His research and clinical work focus on the effect of exercise on the human heart. He studies the range of health from severe heart and lung disease to elite athletes. André leads a young team of researchers in Sports Cardiology and heads the National Centre for Sports Cardiology based at St Vincent’s Hospital … 

    André completed a PhD at St Vincent’s / University of Melbourne and 4 years of post-doctoral research at the University Hospital of Leuven, Belgium. His research and clinical work focus on the effect of exercise on the human heart. He studies the range of health from severe heart and lung disease to elite athletes. André leads a young team of researchers in Sports Cardiology and heads the National Centre for Sports Cardiology based at St Vincent’s Hospital.  He has pioneered novel imaging techniques including exercise cardiac magnetic resonance imaging and contrast echocardiography. He has more than 200 peer-review publications and text-book chapters and is regularly invited to present at all major international cardiology conferences.

    Associate Professor Andre La Gerche