Prof. Dr. J. Wouter Jukema

Professor J. Wouter Jukema is head of the department of cardiology at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) in Leiden, the Netherlands and Board Member of the Netherlands Heart Institute, Utrecht, the Netherlands. He is professor of cardiology and medicine since 2005 with a special focus on atherothrombosis and regenerative medicine. He completed his cardiology training at the LUMC and went on to his doctoral thesis at the Netherlands Heart Institute in Utrecht (1996). He completed his training with a fellowship provided by the European Society of Cardiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. He is a past established clinical investigator of the Netherlands Heart Foundation and founding director of the Durrer Center for Cardiovascular Research in Amsterdam. He is currently the chairman of vascular medicine at the Leiden University Medical Center as well as co-chairman of the Dutch Atherosclerosis Society. Prof. Jukema has been the principal investigator of several major national and international interventional cardiology and atherothrombosis studies and the holder of multiple major European Union grants. His current research interests, which comprise the majority of topics in his more than 1000 peer-reviewed articles (with many in top journals like New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Nature Genetics, Nature Reviews, Science, Circulation, and European Heart Journal), focus on vascular biology, lipids, atherothrombosis, genetics and interventional cardiology in pre-clinical and clinical studies. His Web of Science citation H-index is > 120 with more than 150,000 citations.

Most recent publications

Clinical and Technical Predictors of Treatment Success After Coronary Intravascular Lithotripsy in Calcific Coronary Lesions
van Oort MJH, Bingen BO, Oliveri F, Al Amri I, Phagu AAS, Claessen BEPM, Dimitriu-Leen AC, Vossenberg TN, Kefer J, Girgis H, van der Kley F, Jukema JW and Montero-Cabezas JM
Intravascular lithotripsy (IVL) is increasingly used to treat coronary artery calcification (CAC). This study aimed to identify clinical and procedural factors associated with IVL treatment success.
Genome-wide association study meta-analysis provides insights into the etiology of heart failure and its subtypes
Henry A, Mo X, Finan C, Chaffin MD, Speed D, Issa H, Denaxas S, Ware JS, Zheng SL, Malarstig A, Gratton J, Bond I, Roselli C, Miller D, Chopade S, Schmidt AF, Abner E, Adams L, Andersson C, Aragam KG, Ärnlöv J, Asselin G, Raja AA, Backman JD, Bartz TM, Biddinger KJ, Biggs ML, Bloom HL, Boersma E, Brandimarto J, Brown MR, Brunak S, Bruun MT, Buckbinder L, Bundgaard H, Carey DJ, Chasman DI, Chen X, Cook JP, Czuba T, de Denus S, Dehghan A, Delgado GE, Doney AS, Dörr M, Dowsett J, Dudley SC, Engström G, Erikstrup C, Esko T, Farber-Eger EH, Felix SB, Finer S, Ford I, Ghanbari M, Ghasemi S, Ghouse J, Giedraitis V, Giulianini F, Gottdiener JS, Gross S, Guðbjartsson DF, Gui H, Gutmann R, Hägg S, Haggerty CM, Hedman ÅK, Helgadottir A, Hemingway H, Hillege H, Hyde CL, Aagaard Jensen B, Jukema JW, Kardys I, Karra R, Kavousi M, Kizer JR, Kleber ME, Køber L, Koekemoer A, Kuchenbaecker K, Lai YP, Lanfear D, Langenberg C, Lin H, Lind L, Lindgren CM, Liu PP, London B, Lowery BD, Luan J, Lubitz SA, Magnusson P, Margulies KB, Marston NA, Martin H, März W, Melander O, Mordi IR, Morley MP, Morris AP, Morrison AC, Morton L, Nagle MW, Nelson CP, Niessner A, Niiranen T, Noordam R, Nowak C, O'Donoghue ML, Ostrowski SR, Owens AT, Palmer CNA, Paré G, Pedersen OB, Perola M, Pigeyre M, Psaty BM, Rice KM, Ridker PM, Romaine SPR, Rotter JI, Ruff CT, Sabatine MS, Sallah N, Salomaa V, Sattar N, Shalaby AA, Shekhar A, Smelser DT, Smith NL, Sørensen E, Srinivasan S, Stefansson K, Sveinbjörnsson G, Svensson P, Tammesoo ML, Tardif JC, Teder-Laving M, Teumer A, Thorgeirsson G, Thorsteinsdottir U, Torp-Pedersen C, Tragante V, Trompet S, Uitterlinden AG, Ullum H, van der Harst P, van Heel D, van Setten J, van Vugt M, Veluchamy A, Verschuuren M, Verweij N, Vissing CR, Völker U, Voors AA, Wallentin L, Wang Y, Weeke PE, Wiggins KL, Williams LK, Yang Y, Yu B, Zannad F, Zheng C, , , , Asselbergs FW, Cappola TP, Dubé MP, Dunn ME, Lang CC, Samani NJ, Shah S, Vasan RS, Smith JG, Holm H, Shah S, Ellinor PT, Hingorani AD, Wells Q, Lumbers RT and
Heart failure (HF) is a major contributor to global morbidity and mortality. While distinct clinical subtypes, defined by etiology and left ventricular ejection fraction, are well recognized, their genetic determinants remain inadequately understood. In this study, we report a genome-wide association study of HF and its subtypes in a sample of 1.9 million individuals. A total of 153,174 individuals had HF, of whom 44,012 had a nonischemic etiology (ni-HF). A subset of patients with ni-HF were stratified based on left ventricular systolic function, where data were available, identifying 5,406 individuals with reduced ejection fraction and 3,841 with preserved ejection fraction. We identify 66 genetic loci associated with HF and its subtypes, 37 of which have not previously been reported. Using functionally informed gene prioritization methods, we predict effector genes for each identified locus, and map these to etiologic disease clusters through phenome-wide association analysis, network analysis and colocalization. Through heritability enrichment analysis, we highlight the role of extracardiac tissues in disease etiology. We then examine the differential associations of upstream risk factors with HF subtypes using Mendelian randomization. These findings extend our understanding of the mechanisms underlying HF etiology and may inform future approaches to prevention and treatment.
Meta-analysis of genome-wide associations and polygenic risk prediction for atrial fibrillation in more than 180,000 cases
Roselli C, Surakka I, Olesen MS, Sveinbjornsson G, Marston NA, Choi SH, Holm H, Chaffin M, Gudbjartsson D, Hill MC, Aegisdottir H, Albert CM, Alonso A, Anderson CD, Arking DE, Arnar DO, Barnard J, Benjamin EJ, Braunwald E, Brumpton B, Campbell A, Chami N, Chasman DI, Cho K, Choi EK, Christophersen IE, Chung MK, Conen D, Crijns HJ, Cutler MJ, Czuba T, Damrauer SM, Dichgans M, Dörr M, Dudink E, Duong T, Erikstrup C, Esko T, Fatkin D, Faul JD, Ferreira M, Freitag DF, Ganesh SK, Gaziano JM, Geelhoed B, Ghouse J, Gieger C, Giulianini F, Graham SE, Gudnason V, Guo X, Haggerty C, Hayward C, Heckbert SR, Hveem K, Ito K, Johnson R, Jukema JW, Jurgens SJ, Kääb S, Kane JP, Kany S, Kardia SLR, Kavousi M, Khurshid S, Kamanu FK, Kirchhof P, Kleber ME, Knight S, Komuro I, Krieger JE, Launer LJ, Li D, Lin H, Lin HJ, Loos RJF, Lotta L, Lubitz SA, Lunetta KL, Macfarlane PW, Magnusson PKE, Malik R, Mantineo H, Marcus GM, März W, McManus DD, Melander O, Melloni GEM, Meyre PB, Miyazawa K, Mohanty S, Monfort LM, Müller-Nurasyid M, Nafissi NA, Natale A, Nazarian S, Ostrowski SR, Pak HN, Pang S, Pedersen OB, Pedersen NL, Pereira AC, Pirruccello JP, Preuss M, Psaty BM, Pullinger CR, Rader DJ, Rämö JT, Ridker PM, Rienstra M, Risch L, Roden DM, Rotter JI, Sabatine MS, Schunkert H, Shah SH, Shim J, Shoemaker MB, Simonson B, Sinner MF, Smit RAJ, Smith JA, Smith NL, Smith JG, Soliman EZ, Sørensen E, Sotoodehnia N, Strbian D, Stricker BH, Teder-Laving M, Sun YV, Thériault S, Thorolfsdottir RB, Thorsteinsdottir U, Tveit A, van der Harst P, van Meurs J, Wang B, Weiss S, Wells QS, Weng LC, Wilson PW, Xiao L, Yang PS, Yao J, Yoneda ZT, Zeller T, Zeng L, Zhao W, Zhou X, Zöllner S, , , , Ruff CT, Bundgaard H, Willer C, Stefansson K and Ellinor PT
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common heart rhythm abnormality and is a leading cause of heart failure and stroke. This large-scale meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies increased the power to detect single-nucleotide variant associations and found more than 350 AF-associated genetic loci. We identified candidate genes related to muscle contractility, cardiac muscle development and cell-cell communication at 139 loci. Furthermore, we assayed chromatin accessibility using assay for transposase-accessible chromatin with sequencing and histone H3 lysine 4 trimethylation in stem cell-derived atrial cardiomyocytes. We observed a marked increase in chromatin accessibility for our sentinel variants and prioritized genes in atrial cardiomyocytes. Finally, a polygenic risk score (PRS) based on our updated effect estimates improved AF risk prediction compared to the CHARGE-AF clinical risk score and a previously reported PRS for AF. The doubling of known risk loci will facilitate a greater understanding of the pathways underlying AF.
Risk of Incident Diabetes Related to Lipoprotein(a), LDL Cholesterol, and Their Changes With Alirocumab: Post Hoc Analyses of the ODYSSEY OUTCOMES Randomized Trial
Schwartz GG, Szarek M, Jukema JW, Cobbaert CM, Reijnders E, Bittner VA, Schwertfeger M, Bhatt DL, Fazio S, Garon G, Goodman SG, Harrington RA, White HD and Steg PG
Previous genetic and clinical analyses have associated lower lipoprotein(a) and LDL cholesterol (LDL-C) with greater risk of new-onset type 2 diabetes (NOD). However, PCSK9 inhibitors such as alirocumab lower both lipoprotein(a) and LDL-C without effect on NOD.
Apolipoprotein C3 and risk of cardiovascular events and death in patients on optimized statin treatment after recent acute coronary syndrome
Schwartz GG, Szarek M, Reijnders E, Jukema JW, Bhatt DL, Bittner VA, Fazio S, Garon G, Goodman SG, Harrington RA, White HD, Ruhaak LR, Stevanovic I, Cobbaert CM and Steg PG
Apolipoprotein (Apo) C3 has been associated with incident coronary heart disease and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE). Whether ApoC3 levels predict risk in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) on optimized statin treatment is unknown.