Both 18F-FDG PET and MRI provided high sensitivity for diagnosing cardiac sarcoidosis in patients with suspected cardiac involvement, but the specificity of (18)F-FDG PET was not as high as previously reported. The different distributions of the findings in the two modalities suggest the potential of 18F-FDG PET and MRI in detecting different pathological processes in the heart.

Objective-The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of age, sex, and hypertension (HTN) on aortic atherosclerotic burden using cardiovascular MRI (CMR) in a free-living longitudinally followed cohort. Methods and Results-1763 participants (829 M and 934 F; 38 to 88 years of age) of the Framingham Heart Study Offspring cohort underwent CMR of the thoracoabdominal aorta using an ECG-gated 2D T2-weighted black-blood sequence. Of these, 1726 subjects (96%) with interpretable CMR were characterized by sex, age-quartile, and presence or absence of HTN and clinical cardiovascular disease (CVD). Aortic plaque prevalence and volume increased with increasing age in both sexes. For the nonhypertensive (no-HTN) group, plaque was identified in 702 (46%) with greater prevalence in women than in men (PϽ0.006). HTN was associated with greater aortic plaque burden (PϽ0.02). The 200 subjects with clinical CVD had greater plaque burden than subjects without CVD (PϽ0.0001). Conclusions-In this free-living longitudinally followed cohort, subclinical aortic atherosclerosis was seen in nearly half of subjects and increased with advancing age. HTN was associated with increased aortic plaque burden. Among no-HTN subjects, women had greater plaque burden than men. These data suggest that subclinical atherosclerosis is more common in no-HTN women and emphasize the importance of focusing on preventive measures in both sexes. [2][3][4][5][6] and in such studies, HTN is associated with greater prevalence and extent of aortic and coronary atherosclerosis. 3,5,6 A growing body of evidence has linked subclinical coronary 7 and aortic 8 -10 atherosclerosis to increased risk for clinically overt CVD, suggesting that early diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis in the preclinical stage may reduce CVD sequelae such as myocardial infarction and stroke. However, beyond autopsy studies, our understanding of the relationship between age, sex, and HTN with aortic atherosclerotic burden is incomplete.There are several reports about the relationship between HTN and atherosclerosis. Carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) is greater in persons with HTN than nonhypertensive subjects, and the association between IMT and blood pressure parameters, particularly systolic blood pressure, was found to be independent of age and gender. 11-13 However, the influence of HTN on prevalence of aortic plaque burden in an adult population is unknown. Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) offers unique advantages for assessment of the aorta and quantification of atherosclerotic plaque burden 14 -17 including the lack of ionizing radiation, while providing highly reproducible measures of aortic anatomy and atherosclerosis. 18 We sought to determine the relationship of age, sex, and HTN with aortic atherosclerotic prevalence and burden using CMR in a longitudinally followed free-living community based cohort. Methods Study Population and Sample SelectionThe design of the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) has been detailed elsewhere. 19 Subjects considered for ...

In this randomized trial of black tea intake over 6 months among older adults with known cardiovascular risk factors, black tea did not appreciably influence any traditional or novel biomarkers of cardiovascular risk. Longer randomized trials are needed to verify the inverse association of tea with risk of cardiovascular disease seen in cohort studies and identify potential candidate mechanisms for such an association.