Hadley Wilson, MD, FACC, ACC Immediate Past PresidentHello, I'm Dr. Hadley Wilson. I am immediate past president of the American College of Cardiology, also an interventional cardiologist at Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute, Atrium Health in Charlotte, as well as a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.We opened up with our first late breaking clinical trial and I think one of the major studies there that came from that was the use of another one of these GLP-1 receptor agonists agents, which in the past have been used for blood sugar and obesity and weight loss and so forth. But now we're finding so many positive effects with these agents in patients after they've had acute myocardium infarction or they've had heart failure.Now in this study, which was essentially looking at the use of it in patients with peripheral arterial disease and really noting that after several weeks of using semaglutide agent in these patients, they were actually able to walk longer, significantly, like more than 50 meters, which we're told is an important amount to these patients, and all improved marked quality of life with less leg pain and claudication. So that was an exciting trial.This next one I'm going to talk to about I think was really exciting because it's really fulfilling a need where nothing else has been before and that's the Align AR trial and that was looking at a transcatheter aortic valve for aortic regurgitation and indeed this is a new JenaValve. And by the way, I have no conflicts of interests or interests at all. But this new valve would look to be very promising in a large number of patients in terms of sealing up the leakage of the aortic valve. There were a few that moved and that needs to be corrected over time, but overall, very safe and was showing effective long-term for these patients for correcting a very leaking aortic valves, which is a serious problem and probably after aortic stenosis, one of the second or third most major valve problems that we see today.I'll conclude with probably one of the most sort of Buzzword studies on cannabis and heart disease. And what they found in this study is that yes, those who are regular or frequent smokers of marijuana actually do have increased cardiovascular risk. Before that had not been identified or at least not widely known. I mean, it had been thought, well, you know, tobacco certainly has a risk, but you know tobacco smokers smoke a lot more cigarettes and so forth, but even with the cannabis users, there is a certain significant cardiovascular risk.And so, we are now, you may need to instruct all of our patients who are using marijuana that they should be aware that there's also a cardiovascular risk with cannabis use.Oral Semaglutide and Cardiovascular Outcomes in Persons with Type 2 Diabetes, According to SGLT2i Use: Prespecified Analyses of the SOUL, Randomized TrialChiadi Ndumele, MD, PhD, MHS, Johns Hopkins University, Chair of the American Heart Association’s Council on Lifestyle and Metabolic HeathHello, my name is Chiadi Ndumele. I am an Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and the Director of Obesity and Cardiometabolic Research at Johns Hopkins University's Division of Cardiology. I'm also the Chair of the American Heart Association's Council on Lifestyle and Cardio-Metabolic Health, and it's great to be here today.So, this is a very important study, the SOUL study, that was examining semaglutide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist, in its oral formulation. This was a randomized control trial, which we often consider the gold standard for evidence, among 9,600 individuals who had type 2 diabetes and had either atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, or a combination of the two. It tested an escalating doses of oral semaglutide versus placebo and followed individuals over time for major adverse cardiovascular events and also adverse kidney outcomes as well.So, the study demonstrated a significant reduction in the primary outcome, which was a three-point major adverse cardiovascular event outcome. The risk of that outcome was reduced by 14% to a hazard ratio of 0.86 among those individuals who were taking oral semaglutide relative to placebo.Importantly, it looked like the largest cardiovascular benefit seen was for myocardial infarction, or heart attacks, and that was where we saw, I think, the strongest risk reduction among the outcomes that were being evaluated.Many patients are going to like this formulation, so it's nice to be able to see a cardiovascular benefit from that standpoint. And it looked like that benefit was similar, regardless of whether or not you were taking another diabetes medicine that's known to be protective for cardiovascular disease, the SGLT-2 inhibitors. I will say that they didn't show a reduction in cardiovascular mortality, as well as adverse kidney events, which had been seen in some of the prior studies of semaglutide. So, it's unclear to me at this point whether that's because of differences in the study populations, or if there are any differences between the injectable and oral form of semaglutides that may be contributing to that difference. But a clear benefit with regards to overall major adverse cardiovascular events as per their primary input. .Sign up for our weekly HealthDay newsletter