A review of Robin Choudhury’s book The Beating Heart: The Art & Science of Our Most Vital Organ, which explores depictions and perceptions of the heart across millennia.

In this Tools of the Trade article, Bodagh and Williams highlight the utility of OpenEP, an open-source platform that offers standardized solutions for storage and analysis of electroanatomic mapping data.

In contrast to the ABYSS investigators’ interpretation of the primary results of their trial, we believe that β-blockers can be safely discontinued in the majority of patients after an uncomplicated myocardial infarction. However, in individuals developing symptoms of angina or heart failure, β-blocker treatment remains one of several guideline-recommended therapies.

Elsa Lawrence and Catherine Wilson discuss the study that reported the existence of a transient regenerative window in mammals.

John C. Lin and colleagues explore the history of racial disparities in cardiovascular outcomes and discuss the landmark findings of the CARDIA study and its contribution to the minority stress model.

The 20th anniversary of Nature Reviews Cardiology comes at a time of exciting innovation for cardiovascular research and clinical cardiology, with the advent of nucleic acid-targeted therapeutics, applications of artificial intelligence, promotion of a healthy cardiovascular exposome, personalization of medicine, and recognition of the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in health care.

In this Tools of the Trade article, Li and Bonnin describe the use of cryo-X-ray phase contrast imaging to assess frozen myocardial biopsy samples.

Data from the HELIOS-B trial show that RNA interference with vutrisiran reduces the risk of death and recurrent cardiovascular events in patients with transthyretin amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy.

In patients with heart failure and secondary mitral valve regurgitation, transcatheter edge-to-edge repair is non-inferior to mitral valve surgery with respect to a composite of death, hospitalization for heart failure, reintervention, implantation of an assist device or stroke at 1 year after the procedure, according to findings from the MATTERHORN trial.

In the NOTION-3 trial, percutaneous coronary intervention reduced the occurrence of major adverse cardiac events compared with conservative treatment in patients who were undergoing transcatheter aortic valve implantation for severe aortic stenosis and who had stable coronary artery disease.

The non-steroidal mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist finerenone reduces the risk of adverse outcomes in patients with heart failure with mildly reduced ejection fraction or with preserved ejection fraction, according to findings presented at the ESC Congress 2024.

A single combined measurement of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, LDL-cholesterol and lipoprotein(a) levels in plasma predicts incident cardiovascular events among women over a 30-year follow-up period, according to a new study.

Cardiomyocytes can activate the type I interferon response in the infarct border zone after myocardial infarction, indicating that the type I interferon pathway, in addition to its well-established role in antiviral responses, is also involved in cardiac injury.

New research suggests that the presence of clonal haematopoiesis is unidirectionally associated with the development of atherosclerosis and that colchicine holds potential therapeutic value.

Acute ischaemic stroke induces persistent innate immune memory through epigenetic changes in myeloid progenitors in the bone marrow, and this innate immune training contributes to cardiac remodelling and dysfunction in the long term, according to a new study.

A new small-molecule inhibitor of vasohibins reduces myocardial stiffness and improves diastolic relaxation in a rat model of HFpEF.

A new study indicates that proteins in the sarcomere complex are stochastically removed and degraded and are replaced by newly translated proteins. Sarcomere turnover occurs at a similar rate within cardiomyocytes and across the heart and slows with ageing.

The advent of pulsed-field ablation — a series of ultra-rapid, high-energy pulses that result in non-thermal cell death via electroporation — is revolutionizing the field of atrial fibrillation ablation. Data on first iterations of the technology indicate that safety and efficacy are at least similar to that of thermal ablation but with meaningfully shorter procedure duration.

In this Tools of the Trade article, Jablonska describes the use of proximity-based labelling for the proteomic profiling of novel protein–protein interactions.

In this Tools of the Trade article, Berkeley and Thomson describe the use of a minimally invasive strategy to standardize the induction of myocardial infarction in mice.

Findings from a new study published in Science Immunology suggest that epigenetic changes in haematopoietic stem cells promote the production of pro-inflammatory macrophages and influence their capacity to generate protective macrophage subsets.

Data from the phase IIb MUIR and ARCHES-2 trials show that RNA interference approaches that target either apolipoprotein C-III or ANGPTL3 significantly reduce plasma triglyceride levels in patients with mixed hyperlipidaemia.

Corey McAleese describes the study that identified the presence of metabolic heterogeneity in endothelial cells from different tissues and discusses its relevance to our current understanding of endothelial metabolism.

Milda Folkmanaite and Manuela Zaccolo highlight a study that demonstrates a role for phase-separated condensates of protein kinase A in buffering molecules of cAMP, to illustrate how phase separation of proteins in cardiac cells might contribute to the regulation of cardiac function.

Haemophilia A is caused by variants in the gene that encodes coagulation factor VIII (FVIII). Sequencing of this gene in the 1980s was the initial step in developing replacement therapy with recombinant FVIII, and thereby removing the risk of blood-borne infections from plasma-derived FVIII.

Poscablo and colleagues identify a distinct haematopoietic platelet differentiation pathway that is enriched in ageing mice, which results in platelets that are hyper-reactive compared with canonical platelet populations.

Data from the SEQUOIA-HCM trial show that aficamten, a cardiac myosin inhibitor, increases exercise capacity and improves quality of life in patients with symptomatic obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

In patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and obesity, bariatric metabolic surgery is associated with a lower risk of the incidence of first-ever congestive heart failure than treatment with glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists, according to a new study.

A study in Nature describes a single-cell-type strategy for vascular cell therapies that involves the artificial transplantation of mitochondria to endothelial cells, which promotes mitophagy and facilitates the formation of functional vessels in ischaemic tissue without the need for mesenchymal stromal cell support.

Activation of the bile acid receptor TGR5 inhibits CD36-mediated fatty acid uptake in cardiomyocytes and protects against cardiac lipotoxicity and the development of diabetic cardiomyopathy in mice, according to a new study.