Sex differences in the human heart
Mission
Heart disease in women is under-researched and often misdiagnosed. Women are more likely to develop certain types of heart failure, yet most studies focus on men. We use engineering and data-driven models to study how the heart and vessels age differently in women and men. By uncovering these differences, we aim to support better diagnosis and treatment for everyone.
Researchers on this project
Beatrice Moscoloni
Mathias Peirlinck
Alumni
Sarah Vandepitte, MSc Biomedical Engineering 2024
Yara Wollaert, MSc Biomedical Engineering 2024
Understanding how sex
shapes the heart
Men’s and women’s hearts are not the same—but medical models often assume they are. In our recent study, we analyzed heart shapes from hundreds of healthy individuals in the UK Biobank to understand how sex influences cardiac anatomy. Using advanced 3D modeling and statistical analysis, we found that sex alone accounts for a significant portion of variation in heart structure—even after accounting for age, body size, and blood pressure. Key differences include heart chamber sizes, the shape of the right ventricle, and how the chambers are positioned. These findings highlight the need to move beyond one-size-fits-all models in cardiology and support the development of sex-specific tools for diagnosis and treatment.
Open-Access Research Article
Sex-specific
cardiovascular risk factors
Sex differences in cardiovascular disease diagnosis and risk assessment?
YES! Let's look at the numbers.
We took a deep dive into the UK biobank data and found that:
- women are under-diagnosed for cardiovascular diseases using sex-neutral criteria
- not all Framingham risk factors were found to be important; including ECG data can strongly improve risk assessment
- men and women only shared 5 out of the top 10 most important risk factors
Sex matters: A comprehensive comparison of female and male hearts
Together with Skyler St. Pierre and Ellen Kuhl, we present a significant body of evidence for sex differences across geometric, functional, and structural cardiac parameters.
Frontier in Physiology, 2022
Sex differences in
drug-induced arrhythmogenesis
Do drugs affect female hearts differently?
And if so, why?