Newsletter
Hearts and Minds2026-01-26
“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, / Or else my heart concealing it will break.”
—W. Shakespeare
The heart has long been mentioned in folklore, literature, and religion as the seat of love, and other emotions.
Scientifically, there is a strong bi-directional connection between the heart/ cardiovascular system and the brain/nervous system.
Medically, in cardiology, a lot of attention is paid to treating “last mile disorders” such as hypertension, arrhythmias, cardiac failure, and myocardial infarction, and not enough to their upstream mental health causes. Stress and depression are major factors in the initiation and persistence of cardiovascular disorders. Think only of the extreme example of broken heart syndrome (Takotsubo cardiomyopathy).
In our own work, we have seen that top biomarkers involved in stress (1) are also involved in cardiovascular disease pathways. Some top repurposed drugs for depression we found using biomarker studies are cardiovascular drugs (2). All this came out of empirical work, not hypothesis driven, which makes it even more compelling.
Why not consider these as dual diagnosis disorders, and treat both cardiovascular and mental health at the same time for complete resolution? At each cardiology visit when labs are done, an extra tube should be drawn for mental health biomarkers assessment (such as those present in MindX One https://mindxsciences.com/bloodtests/ ).
Live. Happier. Longer.
Alexander B. Niculescu, MD, PhD
Founder + CEO| MindX Sciences
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(1) Le-Niculescu H, Roseberry K, Levey DF, Rogers J, Kosary K, Prabha S, Jones T, Judd S, McCormick MA, Wessel AR, Williams A, Phalen PL, Mamdani F, Sequeira A, Kurian SM, Niculescu AB. Towards precision medicine for stress disorders: diagnostic biomarkers and targeted drugs. Mol Psychiatry. 2020 May;25(5):918-938. PMID: 30862937
(2) Le-Niculescu H, Roseberry K, Gill SS, Levey DF, Phalen PL, Mullen J, Williams A, Bhairo S, Voegtline T, Davis H, Shekhar A, Kurian SM, Niculescu AB. Precision medicine for mood disorders: objective assessment, risk prediction, pharmacogenomics, and repurposed drugs. Mol Psychiatry. 2021 Jul;26(7):2776-2804. PMID: 33828235