World Heart Day: when EU funding meets research to improve cardiovascular disease treatment and care

World Heart Day is marked every 29 September to raise awareness of cardiovascular disease (CVD), in an effort to reduce preventable and premature deaths, promoting prevention and early detection. 

Projects funded under Horizon Europe 'Health' are advancing research to alleviate the burden of CVDs in Europe, improving patient outcomes and fostering more personalised, patient-centred care. 

EAST-STROKE: reducing mortality and disability related to cardiovascular disease 

Stroke represents a major global health burden, being the second leading cause of death worldwide. Patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) and patients who suffered from an acute ischaemic stroke (which happens when a blockage cuts off the blood supply to part of the brain) are at particularly high risk of recurrent stroke and other adverse cardiovascular events. 

The EAST-STROKE project aims to reduce mortality and disability related to cardiovascular disease by establishing early rhythm-control therapy as a standard treatment approach for patients with acute ischaemic stroke and AF. This is a medical strategy used to restore and maintain a normal heart rhythm in patients with arrhythmias like AF. The project’s key objective is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of early rhythm control in preventing recurrent stroke and other adverse cardiovascular events through a European, multicentre, randomised clinical trial.  

The trial, which has been approved in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain as well as Switzerland, aims to generate robust evidence on the benefit of early rhythm control, contributing to future recommendations and clinical practice. Beyond Europe, the trial is already running in Australia, with the first patient having been randomised in September 2026. Canada and Japan have also secured funding and are preparing for trial initiation. 

To date, 85 patients have enrolled, with recruitment steadily increasing.  

The clinical trial protocol has been published in the European Stroke Journal, the official journal of the European Stroke Organisation (ESO). 

RAPHAEL: towards a more holistic approach to heart failure care 

The RAPHAEL project highlights an often-overlooked aspect of heart failure care: supporting people not only in addressing physical symptoms, but also in overcoming the emotional, social and practical challenges affecting their lives. 

RAPHAEL brings together partners from nine European countries to develop and test a person-centred palliative care approach that can be integrated earlier into heart failure care. It aims to help patients and carers discuss what matters most to them, support shared decision-making and reduce avoidable crisis-driven hospital care. 

The project has identified gaps in current care, including: 

• late referral to palliative care;  
• inconsistent approaches across countries; 
• insufficient attention to patients’ and carers’ wider needs.  

These findings informed Pal@Heart, a multilingual tool combining a symptom diary with a multidimensional needs assessment. It supports a continuous process to identify needs, develop a proactive care plan, monitor symptoms and concerns, and evaluate and adapt care. 

Pal@Heart forms part of a broader approach that includes education for healthcare professionals and implementation strategies tailored to local care ecosystems. RAPHAEL has also established the infrastructure for a nine-country feasibility study. The protocol, data system, training materials and implementation guidance are complete, ethics approvals have been secured in eight countries and recruitment has begun in several of them. Preparations for a multinational evaluation trial are also progressing. 

By combining early identification, multidimensional assessment, professional education and locally adapted implementation, RAPHAEL is working towards heart failure care that starts with the person, not only the disease itself. 

CARE-IN-HEALTH: Cardiovascular disease prevention through an immunological blueprint 

Despite substantial advances in prevention and treatment, chronic inflammation remains a major driver of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), contributing to plaque instability and the occurrence of life-threatening events such as myocardial infarction and stroke. Importantly, if the inflammation is not properly solved by the body, inflammation in the blood vessels can continue even when conventional risk factors like high blood lipid levels are under control. 

The CARE-IN-HEALTH project is studying the mechanisms for the resolution of chronic inflammation in the blood vessels linked to fats in the blood (chronic lipid-driven vascular inflammation) and translating these findings into practical tools for personalised cardiovascular prevention. The project examines blood fats and other biological information, by developing plasma lipidomics and multi-omics analyses of large-scale cohorts, to identify molecules and pathways that distinguish resolving from non-resolving inflammation. These processes can also lead to the development of CVDs over time. CARE-IN-HEALTH will also identify and validate functional, immune-metabolic and immuno-thrombotic targets to be used as potential biomarkers and targets for prevention and treatments. 

The project combines retrospective and prospective clinical studies to investigate how pharmacological and dietary lipid interventions influence the resolution of inflammation. The findings will be integrated into an open-access cardiovascular lipid-immune knowledge base, the CARE-IN-HEALTH Atlas, designed to support the development of personalised prevention strategies. In parallel, the project will develop a multi-criteria decision support system (MCDSS) that integrates diverse biological and clinical data to generate individualised recommendations. A point-of-care biosensor will be developed to enable timely monitoring of biomarkers associated with inflammation resolution. 

Background 

Horizon Europe is the research and innovation programme of the EU for the period 2021-2027. The aims of Cluster 1 ‘Health’ include improving and protecting the health and well-being of citizens of all ages by generating new knowledge, developing innovative solutions and integrating where relevant a gender perspective to prevent, diagnose, monitor, treat and cure diseases. Horizon 2020 (H2020) was the EU’s multiannual funding programme between 2014 and 2020.