Cardiac Clocks and Preclinical Translation.

Circadian rhythms are fundamentally important for cardiovascular health, including heart rate, blood pressure, and molecular gene and protein responses. Rhythms also play a direct role in the pathophysiology of heart disease, such as in the timing of onset and severity of myocardial infarction, sudden cardiac death, ventricular arrhythmias, and stroke. Importantly, a flurry of new studies reveals translational applications for circadian biology to clinical medicine, and especially cardiology. Circadian medicine is a promising new approach that targets the heart's daily physiologic and molecular rhythms to benefit the treatment of patients with cardiovascular disease.