Thomas Munzel

Thomas Munzel
Universitätsmedizin der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz · II. Medical Clinic

MD

About

1,885
Publications
248,806
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80,259
Citations
Citations since 2017
801 Research Items
40238 Citations
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Introduction
Currently we investigate the effects of nighttime aircraft noise on vascular (endothelial) function in patients with established coronary artery disease. The measure endothelial function we use the flow dependent dilation of the brachial artery. We also assess annoyance, sleep quality, measure stress hormones and blood pressure.
Additional affiliations
January 2010 - December 2012
Universitätsmedizin der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Position
  • Founding Director
April 2004 - present
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Position
  • Chief in Cardiology
October 1995 - March 2004
University Medical Center Hamburg - Eppendorf
Position
  • Professor (Associate)

Publications

Publications (1,885)
Conference Paper
Hintergrund: Zum Zusammenhang zwischen psychosozialen Belastungen und Gesundheit oder Arbeitszufriedenheit existieren eine Vielzahl von Querschnittstudien – Längsschnittstudien zur Prüfung der Kausalität sind aber aufwändig und daher selten. In der großen bevölkerungsrepräsentativen „Gutenberg Health Study“ (N=15.000) wurden die Instrumente COPSOQ...
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Aims To investigate the association between cumulative social disadvantage and cardiovascular burden and mortality in a large cohort of the general population. Methods and results Cross-sectional (n = 15 010, aged 35 to 74 years, baseline investigation period 2007 to 2012) and longitudinal data (5- and 10-year follow-ups from 2012 to 2022) from the...
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Ein Prädiabetes mit linksventrikulärer Hypertrophie (LVH) hat dasselbe Mortalitätsrisiko wie ein Typ-2-Diabetes ohne LVH. Diese Ergebnisse aus der Gutenberg-Gesundheitsstudie werden durch andere internationale Studien bestätigt.
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E-Zigaretten enthalten reaktive Aldehyde, die in den Organismus gelangen und toxisch wirken. Epidemiologisch konnte gezeigt werden, dass das kardiovaskuläre Risiko vor allem dann ansteigt, wenn E-Zigaretten und auch Tabak geraucht werden.
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Objectives A series of human field studies demonstrated that acute exposure to simulated nocturnal traffic noise is associated with cardiovascular complications and sleep disturbance, including endothelial dysfunction, increased blood pressure, and impaired sleep quality. A pooled analysis of these results remains to be established and is of tremen...
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The world population is aging rapidly, and by some estimates, the number of people older than 60 will double in the next 30 years. With the increase in life expectancy, adverse effects of environmental exposures start playing a more prominent role in human health. Air pollution is now widely considered the most detrimental of all environmental risk...
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Large epidemiological studies have shown that traffic noise promotes the development of cardiometabolic diseases. It remains to be established how long these adverse effects of noise may persist in response to a noise-off period. We investigated the effects of acute aircraft noise exposure (mean sound level of 72 dB(A) applied for 4d) on oxidative...
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Background: Diabetes mellitus (DM) represents a relevant risk factor regarding morbidity and mortality worldwide. However, only limited data exist regarding the impact of DM on the clinical outcome of patients with COVID-19 infection. Methods: All hospitalized patients with confirmed COVID-19-infection (ICD-code U07.1) during the year 2020 in Ge...
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Background: Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) is a standard treatment for patients with aortic valve stenosis due to its very low mortality and complication rates. However, in a younger and healthier patient population, survival and physical integrity are not the only important factors. Quality of life (QoL) is crucial in the evaluatio...
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Electronic cigarettes (E-cigarettes) have recently become a popular alternative to traditional tobacco cigarettes. Despite being marketed as a healthier alternative, increasing evidence shows that E-cigarette vapour could cause adverse health effects. It has been postulated that degradation products of E-cigarette liquid, mainly reactive aldehydes,...
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Large epidemiological and health impact assessment studies at the global scale, such as the Global Burden of Disease project, indicate that chronic non-communicable diseases, such as atherosclerosis and diabetes mellitus, caused almost two-thirds of the annual global deaths in 2020. By 2030, 77% of all deaths are expected to be caused by non- commu...
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Purpose Anti-retinal autoantibodies are assumed to be associated with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). To our knowledge, this is the first evaluation of autoantibodies in human sera of participants with different stages of AMD in a large population-based, observational cohort study in Germany. Methods The Gutenberg Health Study (GHS) is a p...
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Die Exposition gegenüber dem Schwermetall Blei könnte als Kofaktor bei kardiovaskulärenErkrankungen eine Rolle spielen. Die gute Nachricht ist, dass die Belastung mit Blei über Luft,Nahrungsmittel und Trinkwasser kontinuierlich abnimmt.
Article
Psoriasis is an immune-mediated inflammatory skin disease driven by interleukin-17A (IL-17A) and associated with cardiovascular dysfunction. We used a severe psoriasis mouse model of keratinocyte IL-17A overexpression (K14-IL-17Aind/+ , IL-17Aind/+ control mice) to investigate the activity of neutrophils and a potential cellular interconnection bet...
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Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Background Over the last years, the concept of multidisciplinary pulmonary embolism response teams (PERTs) has emerged to encounter the increasing variety and complexity in the management of acute pulmonary embolism (PE). Purpose To investigate the composition and added clinical value of PER...
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Background: Isolated pulmonary embolism (PE) appears to be associated with a specific clinical profile and sequelae compared to deep vein thrombosis (DVT)-associated PE. The objective of this study was to identify clinical characteristics that discriminate both phenotypes, and to characterize their differences in clinical outcome. Methods: We pe...
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Background: Individuals with acute venous thromboembolism (VTE) constitute a heterogeneous group of patients with diverse clinical characteristics and outcome. Objectives: To identify endotypes of individuals with acute VTE based on clinical characteristics at presentation through unsupervised cluster analysis and to evaluate their molecular pro...
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Background There is a debate regarding the best stent strategy for unprotected distal left main (LM) bifurcation disease. Among two-stent techniques, double-kissing and crush (DKC) is favored in current guidelines but is complex and requires expertise. Reverse T and Protrusion (rTAP) was shown to be a comparable strategy regarding short-term effica...
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Aims Environmental stressors such as traffic noise represent a global threat, accounting for 1.6 million healthy life years lost annually in Western Europe. Therefore, the noise-associated health side effects must be effectively prevented or mitigated. Non-pharmacological interventions such as physical activity or a balanced healthy diet are effect...
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Background The present study aimed to develop a simple dosing score when starting the cardiac glycoside digitoxin in heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) employing first data from the randomized, double-blinded DIGIT-HF trial. Methods and results In DIGIT-HF, digitoxin was started with a dose of 0.07 mg once daily (o.d.) in all pat...
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Smoking tobacco cigarettes is a significant (cardiovascular) health risk factor. Although the number of tobacco cigarette users declined over the last decades, shisha smoking and e-cigarette vaping partially compensated for this health benefit. E-cigarettes may create highly addicted dual users (vaping and smoking). E-cigarettes seem not to represe...
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Traffic noise and air pollution are environmental stressors found to increase risk for cardiovascular events. The burden of disease attributable to environmental stressors and cardiovascular disease globally is substantial, with a need to better understand the contribution of specific risk factors that may underlie these effects. Epidemiological ob...
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Traffic noise and air pollution are 2 major environmental health risk factors in urbanized societies that often occur together. Despite cooccurrence in urban settings, noise and air pollution have generally been studied independently, with many studies reporting a consistent effect on blood pressure for individual exposures. In the present reviews,...
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Background: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) and arterial thromboembolism (ATE) are considered as two separate disease-entities. In recent years, studies have reported clear associations between VTE and atherosclerosis. We aimed to evaluate the long-term risk of ATE in VTE patients in comparison to controls without VTE. Methods: Nationwide outpatien...
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During the last two decades, large epidemiological studies have shown that the physical environment, including noise, air pollution or heavy metals, have a considerable impact on human health. It is known that the most common cardiovascular risk factors are all associated with endothelial dysfunction. Vascular tone, circulation of blood cells, infl...
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Studies have indicated that transportation noise is associated with higher cardiovascular mortality, whereas evidence of noise as a risk factor for respiratory and cancer mortality is scarce and inconclusive. Also, knowledge on effects of low-level noise on mortality is very limited. We aimed to investigate associations between road and railway noi...
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Optimal growth and development in childhood and adolescence is crucial for lifelong health and well-being1–6 . Here we used data from 2,325 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight from 71 million participants, to report the height and body-mass index (BMI) of children and adolescents aged 5–19 years on the basis of rural an...
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Zusammenfassung Luftverschmutzung, Verkehrslärm und Hitzewellen sind umweltbedingte Gesundheitsrisikofaktoren, die häufig in urbanen Räumen kolokalisiert sind. Diese Risikofaktoren können singulär oder in Interaktion auftreten und wirken und sind vor allem für kardiovaskuläre und zerebrale gesundheitliche Nebenwirkungen verantwortlich. Bekannt ist,...
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Tobacco cigarette smoking is among the most complex and least understood health risk factors. A deeper insight into the pathophysiological actions of smoking exposure is of special importance as smoking is a major cause of chronic non-communicable diseases, in particular of cardiovascular disease as well as risk factors such as atherosclerosis and...
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Background and Objectives: Tinnitus is a common symptom in medical practice, although data on its prevalence vary. As the underlying pathophysiological mechanism is still not fully understood, hearing loss is thought to be an important risk factor for the occurrence of tinnitus. The aim of this study was to assess tinnitus prevalence in a large Ger...
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Open in new tabDownload slide Formation and biological effects of ozone on the cardiovascular system. Ozone (O3) is formed by photochemical reactions (UV light from the sun) of oxygen in the atmosphere and is facilitated by nitrogen oxides (e.g. ·NO2) from traffic combustion exhaust and by high temperature. O3 can react with volatile organic compo...
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Background: Myocarditis as cardiac involvement in COVID-19-infection is well known. Real-world data about incidence in hospitalized COVID-19-patients and risk factors for myocarditis in COVID-19-patients are sparse. Methods: We used the German nationwide inpatient sample to analyze all hospitalized patients with confirmed COVID-19-diagnosis in G...
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Background A growing body of evidence suggests that air pollution exposure is associated with an increased risk for cardiovascular diseases. Data regarding the impact of long-term air pollution exposure on ischemic stroke mortality are sparse. Methods The German nationwide inpatient sample was used to analyse all cases of hospitalized patients w...
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Background: The present study aimed to investigate how depressive symptoms affect bodyweight change (gain and loss), and how this association is intertwined with other psychosocial and biomedical factors in the adult general population. Methods: In a population-based, prospective, observational single-center cohort study in the Rhine-Main-Region...
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Pulmonary vein stenosis (PVS) after radiofrequency energy mediated percutaneous pulmonary vein isolation as treatment option for atrial fibrillation is a serious complication and the prevalence in historical reports vary between 0 to 42 percent. Symptoms of PVS are nonspecific and can included general symptoms such as dyspnea, cough, recurrent pneu...
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Background: Hearing is a basic ability that is needed for participation in daily life. Hearing loss often greatly reduces a person's quality of life. Nevertheless, epidemiological data on the prevalence of hearing disorders in Germany are sparse. This study investigated the prevalence of hearing disorders and the actual provision with hearing aids...
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Background Microvascular angina (MVA) is a frequent condition for which our understanding of the disease pathophysiology and therapeutic perspectives remain unsatisfactory. The current study is designed to test whether an improvement in microvascular resistances could be achieved by elevating backward pressure in the coronary venous system, based o...
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Aims For patients with severe mitral valve regurgitation (MR), different kinds of transcatheter mitral valve repair (TMVr) exist, targeting the leaflets, annulus, and chordae. The concomitant combination (COMBO) therapy of TMVrs is rarely used as treatment, and there are very few publications about this therapeutic strategy. We evaluated the effect...
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Objectives: The right heart is mainly supplied with blood by the right coronary artery (RCA). The impact of RCA chronic total occlusion (CTO) on the function of the right heart [right atrium (RA) and ventricle (RV)] and whether successful recanalization of a RCA CTO improves the function of the right heart is not clearly understood yet. We aimed t...
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Previous studies demonstrated an important role of oxidative stress in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in diabetic patients due to hyperglycemia. CVD remains the leading cause of premature death in the western world. Therefore, diabetes mellitus-associated oxidative stress and subsequent inflammation should be recognized at the ear...
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Background The sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitor empagliflozin improves cardiovascular outcome in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and heart failure. Experimental studies suggest a direct cardiac effect of empagliflozin associated with an improvement in left ventricular diastolic function. Methods In the randomized, double-bli...
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Background: Pulmonary embolism (PE) is accompanied by high morbidity and mortality. The search for simple and easily assessable risk stratification scores with favourable effectiveness is still ongoing, and prognostic performance of the CRB-65 score in PE might promising. Methods: The German nationwide inpatient sample was used for this study. A...
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Tinnitus is a common symptom reported in otolaryngologic practice. Although the pathophysiology of tinnitus has not been fully understood, clinical studies suggest that psychological symptoms of depression, anxiety, and somatization are increased in tinnitus patients. However, patients seeking medical treatment for tinnitus may be especially vulner...
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Background Intensive care units (ICU) capacities are one of the most critical determinants in health-care management of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, we aimed to analyze the ICU-admission and case-fatality rate as well as characteristics and outcomes of patient admitted to ICU in order to identify predictors and associated conditions for worsen...
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The WHO reports that more than 1.6 million healthy life-years are lost yearly from traffic-related noise in Western Europe. In addition, the number of studies reporting health side effects in response to traffic noise is steadily growing, mainly cardiovascular disease (CVD), such as acute and chronic ischemic heart disease, heart failure, arrhythmi...
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Significance: Cardiovascular disease and drug-induced health side effects are frequently associated with - or even caused by - an imbalance between the concentrations of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS) and antioxidants respectively determining the metabolism of these harmful oxidants. Recent advances: According to the "kindling radic...
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Aims Traffic noise may play an important role in the development and deterioration of ischemic heart disease. Thus, we sought to determine the mechanisms of cardiovascular dysfunction and inflammation induced by aircraft noise in a mouse model of myocardial infarction (MI) and in humans with incident MI. Methods and Results C57BL/6J mice were expos...
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Previous evidence suggested that non-COVID-19-related medical care was reduced during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it remained unclear whether or to which extent this effect lasted beyond the first wave, or existed in a longer time frame. Here, we consider questionnaire data of the Gutenberg-COVID-19 study together with pre-pandemic...
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Previous studies reported significantly altered tryptophan catabolite concentrations in major depression. Thus, tryptophan catabolites were considered as potential biomarkers of depression and their modulators as potential targets for psychopharmacotherapy. However, the results were based mainly on studies with small sample sizes limiting their gen...
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Despite major advances in acute interventions of myocardial infarction (MI), adverse cardiac remodeling and excess fibrosis post MI causing ischemic heart failure (IHF) remains a leading cause of death worldwide. Here we identify a pro-fibrotic coagulation signaling pathway that can be targeted for improved cardiac function following MI with persis...
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Background Right ventricular (RV) function plays a critical role in the pathophysiology and acute prognosis of pulmonary embolism (PE). We analyzed the temporal changes of RV function in the cohort of a prospective multicentre study investigating if an early switch to oral anticoagulation in patients with intermediate-risk PE is effective and safe....
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Background Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a life-threatening acute disease accompanied by high morbidity and mortality. Regarding hospitalizations of patients with PE, risk stratification of these patients is crucial. Thus, risk stratification tools like risk scores are of key interest. Methods The nationwide German inpatient sample of the years 2005–...
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Background: While chronic exposure to high levels of noise was demonstrated to increase the risk of various cardiovascular diseases, the association between noise annoyance and risk of cardiovascular disease remains still inconsistent. Recently, we showed that noise annoyance is associated with prevalent atrial fibrillation in the general populatio...
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The results from epidemiological studies suggest that environmental noise including aircraft, railway, road traffic, wind turbine, and leisure-related noise is a growing public health concern. According to the WHO, at least 100 million people in the European Union are affected by traffic noise levels above the WHO-recommended thresholds. Environmen...
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Introduction There is evidence that plasma protein profiles differ in the two subtypes of pulmonary embolism (PE), isolated PE (iPE) and deep vein thrombosis (DVT)-associated PE (DVT-PE), in the acute phase. The aim of this study was to determine specific plasma signatures for proteins related to platelets in acute iPE and DVT-PE compared to isolat...
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Worldwide, up to 8.8 million excess deaths/year have been attributed to air pollution, mainly due to the exposure to fine particulate matter (PM). Traffic-related noise is an additional contributor to global mortality and morbidity. Both health risk factors substantially contribute to cardiovascular, metabolic and neuropsychiatric sequelae. Studies...
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Background Patients suffering cardiac arrest resulting from ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) are at very high risk of death. In addition to reperfusion strategies, therapeutic hypothermia is recommended for cardiac arrest patients who remain unconscious after resuscitation. However, data analysis of the impact of therapeutic hypot...
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Background Individuals living at-risk-of-poverty have an increased risk of poor mental health. The pandemic and its societal impacts might have negative effects especially on this group widening the gap between rich and poor and also exacerbate gender gaps, which in turn might impact social cohesion. Aim The objective of this longitudinal study wa...
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Aims: Patients suffering from viral pneumonia caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection are at risk of developing acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). ARDS is a serious complication of COVID-19 that requires early recognition and comprehensive management. Little is known about the concomitant prevalence...