March 2026 Dispatch for the CV Team

Every month, Section Editor L.A. McKeown curates a roundup of recent news beyond our regular TCTMD coverage, with tidbits from journals and medical meetings around the globe that are of special interest to heart teams and allied cardiovascular professionals.

Elevated blood pressure at the time of embryo transfer for in vitro fertilization may up the odds of having poorer maternal and fetal outcomes, according to a single-center cohort study of more than 43,000 women in China. While women who had a BP of 130/80 mm Hg or lower had a live birth rate of 49.2%, those with stage 1 and stage 2 hypertension at embryo transfer had rates of 46.1% and 41.4%, respectively. Having stage 1 or stage 2 hypertension also was associated with more pregnancy loss, preeclampsia, and preterm delivery, the researchers write in Hypertension.

Compared with men, women may experience major adverse cardiovascular events despite a lower coronary plaque burden and volume, an analysis of the PROMISE trial suggests. While the median plaque burden was 156 mm³ for men and 78 mm³for women, the rates of all-cause death, non-fatal MI, and hospitalization for unstable angina did not significantly differ between the two over a median follow-up of 26 months. Writing in Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging, the investigators say the findings hint that even moderate increases in plaque burden “may carry disproportionate risk in women, suggesting that general thresholds used to define high risk may underestimate risk in women.”

Traffic noise may do more than just interrupt a good night’s sleep, according to a study published in Cardiovascular Research that connects it to measurable biologic changes, including impaired vascular function, increased heart rate, and adverse effects on immune, vascular, and stress-related proteomic pathways. In the small study of healthy adult participants, morning functional testing showed that exposure to just one night of road-traffic noise stressed the cardiovascular system. The researchers say the strong correlation they saw supports stricter noise regulation to improve cardiovascular health in the general public. 

The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has not met in 1 year, and its first chair and first scientific advisor are both worried about what that means for health prevention policy going forward. In an opinion piece published in Annals of Internal Medicine, Robert S. Lawrence, MD (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD) and Steven H. Woolf, MD, MPH (Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond), say the 42-year-old independent group’s evidence-based recommendations for everything from cancer screenings to statin guidance and routine blood-pressure screening for hypertensive disorders of pregnancy is in jeopardy, with no clear timetable for when they will meet again or who will replace the nearly one-third of members whose terms expired at the end of 2025. Lawrence and Woolf say they also have no idea what will happen to the four draft guidelines that were set to be finalized.

Prior authorization for guideline-recommended heart failure medication may be a contributor to healthcare disparities. In a study of more than 2,100 patients, those who needed a prior authorization had to wait three times longer to fill angiotensin receptor-neprilysin inhibitor (ARNI) prescriptions than patients who didn’t need prior authorization, and six times longer to fill a sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitor. Writing in JACC: Advances, the researchers note that individuals who lived in lower socioeconomic-status neighborhoods, identified as Black or Hispanic, and covered by Medicaid were more often required to have prior authorization for these medications.

Almost half of patients who have heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) are readmitted at least once during the year after their initial hospitalization for an acute event, according to data from the European Society of Cardiology HF III registry. That contrasts with a rate of 36% in patients who have HF with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). In-hospital mortality rates were 5.2 and 3.4%, respectively. Reporting the results in the European Heart Journal, the investigators say the data suggest that “new interventions and trials in patients with [acute] HF still needing acute, intravenous treatment are sorely needed.”

Stopping glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) medications even briefly can result in a type of “metabolic whiplash” in some patients that quickly erases CV benefits, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal. While prior studies have shown that stopping the medications is associated with rapid regaining of weight, the new study of mostly male US veterans with diabetes found that an interruption of just 6 months before resuming treatment increased the risk of MACE by 4% compared with those who had no interruption in GLP-1 use for 3 years.

A study presented at the recent ESC Acute CardioVascular Care 2026 meeting suggests that artificial intelligence (AI)-based interpretation of the initial ECG could improve detection of obstructive MI. The AI method correctly identified occlusive disease in 84% of cases, compared with a rate of 42% with human ECG interpretation (P < 0.001). The investigators say the findings suggest that integration of this type of AI oversight into routine practice “may accelerate the diagnosis, giving access to an earlier treatment and promoting more efficient utilization of medical resources.”

News Highlights From TCTMD:

Lower LDL Levels, Starting Earlier in Life: New ACC/AHA Dyslipidemia Guidelines

AI for Heart Failure Care Is Evolving Rapidly, THT 2026 Makes Clear

Positive Top-line Results for Retatrutide in Diabetes: TRANSCEND-T2D-1

Premature Menopause Increases Lifetime Heart Disease Risk Regardless of Race

Healthy Lifestyle Plus GLP-1s Yields Bigger CV Reduction Than Drugs Alone