Gregory Wellenius

The job opening was in software and hardware development for cardiology research projects. "I didn’t know a lot of cardiology—I had studied the brain," he recalled, "but they were willing to teach me and give me the time to learn about the cardiovascular system’s physiology."

Not only did Wellenius land the job, he also decided to pursue a doctorate in environmental health and epidemiology. He graduated this June, and his thesis work, "Air Pollution-Induced Cardiac Arrhythmias, Ischemia, and Heart Failure," garnered him the 2004 Edgar Haber Award in Biological Sciences for outstanding achievement in laboratory studies. The annual award is given by the Division of Biological Sciences.

From the start, Wellenius collaborated closely—first as an employee, later as a student—with Richard Verrier, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and John Godleski, associate professor of pathology at HMS. Both are also associate professors in the Department of Environmental Health at HSPH. The team looked for connections between air pollution and cardiovascular disease.

As captivating as he found his work, Wellenius had no plans, initially, to join the ranks of graduate students in public health. But, he said, "John [Godleski] encouraged me to pursue this work in the context of the doctoral program. I’m glad he pushed."

Wellenius found that the heart was a fascinating study subject. "The heart is so beautiful in its simplicity," he said. "At first glance, it’s just a pump and some plumbing. But it holds so many secrets."

One of his favorite cardiac mysteries, he continued, "deals with heart rate. Many would assume that a constant heart rate is good and desirable. Researchers have known for some time, however, that variability from beat to beat is observed in healthy individuals. Older patients and those who have had a recent heart attack have less of this heart rate variability. Findings like these highlight the cardiovascular system’s subtleties."

Another of the heart’s secrets was uncovered when Wellenius studied heart failure-related hospital admissions records from 1987 to 1999. "We wanted to know," he explained, "if more people were admitted for heart failure on days of high air pollution than on days of low air pollution."

Wellenius and his advisors examined Medicare hospitalization records for seniors living in and around Pittsburgh, PA. They found about a three percent increase in the rate of hospitalization of patients suffering from heart failure when comparing a typical high-pollution day to a typical low-pollution day.

Wellenius refuses to take much credit for the design of such illuminating research, but Godleski said otherwise: "Greg took the initiative in the design of his studies at the beginning of his graduate work, at a level that you hope your graduate students are able to do by the end of their studies."

He added that Wellenius "has already made substantial laboratory contributions in environmental cardiology with publications from his thesis." These publications, which helped Wellenius win the Haber Award, described his laboratory studies on the effects of concentrated ambient air particles on heart attacks and strokes in animal models. The studies were published in Toxicologic Sciences and Environmental Health Perspectives and cited in the recently published American Heart Association’s Position Statement on Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease.

These days, as a postdoctoral fellow in cardiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Wellenius examines whether air pollution increases the risk of stroke. "Relatively few studies have looked at stroke," Wellenius said, "and we have good data from stroke patients and an excellent air monitoring station that we can use in the research." The station, located on the roof of the Countway Library of Medicine, was devised by Petros Koutrakis, professor of environmental sciences in the Department of Environmental Health at HSPH, with whom Wellenius collaborated while in graduate school.

Eventually Wellenius would like to teach and continue doing research that combines epidemiology and physiology.

In the meantime, the organ that keeps the body’s blood flowing still exerts tremendous pull on Wellenius. "The heart holds enough mysteries to interest us for centuries to come," he said.

--EM