Scientific opportunities in resilience research for cardiovascular health and wellness. Report from a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute workshop

Exposure of biological systems to acute or chronic insults triggers a host of molecular and physiological responses to either tolerate, adapt, or fully restore homeostasis; these responses constitute the hallmarks of resilience. Given the many facets, dimensions, and discipline-specific focus, gaining a shared understanding of resilience has been identified as a priority for supporting advances in cardiovascular health. This report is based on the working definition: Resilience is the ability of living systems to successfully maintain or return to homeostasis in response to physical, molecular, individual, social, societal, or environmental stressors or challenges, developed after considering many factors contributing to cardiovascular resilience through deliberations of multidisciplinary experts convened by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute during a workshop entitled: Enhancing Resilience for Cardiovascular Health and Wellness. Some of the main emerging themes that support the possibility of enhancing resilience for cardiovascular health include optimal energy management and substrate diversity, a robust immune system that safeguards tissue homeostasis, and social and community support. The report also highlights existing research challenges, along with immediate and long-term opportunities for resilience research. Certain immediate opportunities identified are based on leveraging existing high-dimensional data from longitudinal clinical studies to identify vascular resilience measures, create a 'resilience index,' and adopt a life-course approach. Long-term opportunities include developing quantitative cell/organ/system/community models to identify resilience factors and mechanisms at these various levels, designing experimental and clinical interventions that specifically assess resilience, adopting global sharing of resilience-related data, and cross-domain training of next-generation researchers in this field.

Automated summary

This article discusses the importance of resilience in cardiovascular health. Resilience is the ability of biological systems to maintain homeostasis in response to stressors or challenges, and it includes factors such as energy management, immune system, and social support. The article also highlights the challenges and opportunities for resilience research, including using existing clinical data to assess resilience and developing quantitative models to study resilience factors and mechanisms.