Gregory Marcus
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common heart rhythm disorder. It causes frequent hospital stays, poorer quality of life and higher risks of stroke and death.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
Physiology
- Topics
atrial fibrillation
arrhythmia
alcohol
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Design a smartphone app with atrial fibrillation patients and experts that promotes alcohol abstinence through messages, personal charts of alcohol and AF episodes, and location-triggered encouragement, then test it against a control in a randomized trial.
- Test whether drinking within guideline limits directly triggers AF episodes by randomly assigning patients each day to drink or abstain while recording heart rhythm with a continuous ECG, a skin alcohol sensor and a Fitbit.
- Link the AF Ablation National Cardiovascular Data Registry with the Eureka mobile health platform to follow ablation patients over time, and test whether female sex, cryoablation and non-teaching hospitals predict worse results.
- Test whether drinking less alcohol after catheter ablation is linked to better outcomes, and describe how often atrioesophageal fistula occurs and what predicts it, using multi-center registry and app data.
More about the research
Alcohol, the world's most widely used drug, appears to trigger AF episodes. Catheter ablation, a procedure that destroys small areas of heart tissue to stop the faulty rhythm, is a leading treatment. Both projects here use smartphones, wearables and the Eureka Digital Research Platform, a mobile health research system co-developed by the PI, to study AF in people's everyday lives.
Why it matters
AF affects many people and leads to hospital stays, stroke and death. A scalable smartphone tool that helps patients stop drinking could reduce their AF burden. A trial showing whether moderate drinking directly triggers episodes could give patients clear guidance. Following ablation patients across hundreds of U.S. hospitals could show how well the procedure works and how safe it is in everyday practice. This could help patients and doctors choose approaches and spot serious complications.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Anna Pfenniger
Northwestern University, IL·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Map when and where endothelial dysfunction appears during atrial fibrillation, especially the shift from paroxysmal to persistent AF, in two large animal models of AF.
Thomas Everett
Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, IN·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether skin sympathetic nerve activity (SKNA), nerve signals recorded noninvasively from the skin, predicts brain recovery in cardiac arrest patients receiving targeted temperature management, a protective cooling therapy.
Peter Hanna
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Identify which ganglionated plexus neurons supply the pulmonary veins and back wall of the left atrium by injecting a retrograde neural tracer into donated human hearts and imaging them with confocal microscopy.
The school
University of California-San Francisco: 89 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 164 research doctorates a year.
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