A significant number of Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) first responders who were at the World Trade Center disaster site have lung disease. Certain lung conditions and particulate exposure may be risk factors for cardiovascular disease such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke.

Unfortunately, early diagnosis and therapeutic options are few, in part due to our limited understanding of how these conditions develop after exposure.

In order to better understand the disease, a research team at NYU Langone, led by principal investigator Anna Nolan, MD, is studying the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease due to particulate matter exposure in FDNY responders.

But we need your help to confirm and expand our understanding of World Trade Center–related cardiovascular diseases—an important step toward improving prevention and treatment.

How to Participate

We are actively recruiting participants for our study, which is known as WTC-CaRVD (short for “World Trade Center-cardiorespiratory and vascular dysfunction”). If you are a 9/11 FDNY first responder who is interested in participating, please reach out to us at nolanlab_carvd@nyulangone.org, and a member of our team will contact you.

Study Investigators

Anna Nolan, MD
Professor, Department of Medicine
Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine
Division of Environmental Medicine

Sophia Kwon, DO, MPH
Instructor, Department of Medicine
Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine

Sanjiti Podury, MD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Medicine
Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine

Muhammad Saad Farooqi, MD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Medicine
Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine

Rachel Lam, BS
Research Assistant, Department of Medicine
Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine

Lira Gutierrez
Research Coordinator, Department of Medicine
Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine

Related Publications

Verma Jasra S, Giricz O, Zeig-Owens R, Goldfarb D, Barreto-Galvez A, Pradhan K, Chen J, Choudhary GS, Aluri S, Bhagat TD, Shastri A, Thiruthuvanathan V, Goto H, Gerhardt J, Gordon S, Veerappan A, Haider SH, Bartenstein M, Nwankwo G, Landgren O, Weiden M, Fletcher F, Greenberger L, Ebert BL, Steidl UG, Britta Will, Nolan A, Prezant D, Madireddy A, and Verma A. High burden of Clonal Hematopoiesis in First Responders Exposed to the World Trade Center Disaster. Nature Medicine; 28, 468–471 (2022). DOI.

Kwon S, Lee M; Crowley G; Schwartz T; Zeig-Owens R; Prezant DJ; Liu M; Nolan A. Dynamic Metabolic Risk Profiling of World Trade Center-lung disease: a Longitudinal Cohort Study. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2021 Nov 1;204(9):1035-1047. PMID: 34473012; ISSN: 1535-4970; CID: 4995692. DOI.

Editorial Holguin F. Metabolic Risk Factors and the Development of World Trade Center Lung Disease. Am. J Respir. Crit. Care Med. Volume 204, Issue 9 | November 1 2021: pg 1008-1010. PubMed: 34550869. DOI.

Cleven KL; Rosenzvit C; Nolan A; Zeig-Owens R; Kwon S; Weiden MD; Skerker M; Halpren A; Prezant DJ. Twenty Year Reflection on the Impact of World Trade Center Exposure on Pulmonary Outcomes in Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) Rescue and Recovery Workers. Lung. 2021 Dec; 199(6):569-578. DOI.

Crowley, G; Kim JS; Kwon S; Lam R; Prezant DJ; Liu M; Nolan A. PEDF, a pleiotropic WTCLI biomarker: Machine learning biomarker identification and validation. Plos Computational Biology. Published: July 21, 2021. DOI.

Lancet EA; Gonzalez D; Alexandrou NA; Zabar B; Lai PH; Hall CB; Braun J; Zeig-Owens R; Ben-Eli D; Isaacs D; Reisman N; Kaufman B; Asaeda G; Weiden MD; Nolan A; Teo H; Wei E; Natsui S; Philippou C; Prezant DJ. Pre-hospital Hypoxemia, Measured by Pulse Oximetry, Predicts Hospital Outcomes During the New York City COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians Open. 2021 Apr; 2(2):e12407. DOI.

Lam R; Kwon S; Sunseri M; Crowley G; Schwartz T; Zeig-Owens R; Halpren A; Colbeth H; Liu M; Prezant DJ; Nolan A. Dietary Phenotype and Advanced Glycation End-Products Predict WTC-Obstructive Airways Disease: a Longitudinal Observational Study. Respiratory Research. Published 18 January 2021. Volume 22, Article number: 19 (2021). DOI.

Weiden MD; Zeig-Owens R; Singh A; Schwartz T; Liu Y; Vaeth B; Nolan A; Cleven KL; Hurwitz K; Beecher S; and Prezant DJ. Pre-COVID-19 Lung Function and Other Risk Factors for Severe COVID-19 in First Responders. ERJ Open Research. 2021 Jan; 7(1): 00610-2020. PMCID: PMC7607970; PMID: 33527077. DOI.

Kwon S; Bangalore S; Altschul E; Nolan A. COVID-19 Myocarditis: a Case Report, Overview of Diagnosis and Treatment. Infect Dis Clin Pract. 2021 November 2021 - Volume 29 - Issue 6 - p e414-e417. DOI.

Sengupta V; Sengupta S; Lazo A, Jr.; Woods, P; Nolan, A and Bremmer, N. Exosomes Derived from Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells as Treatment for Severe COVID-19. Published Online:12 May 2020. Stem Cells Dev. 2020 Jun 15;29(12):747-754. Epub 2020 May 12. PubMed PMID: 32380908; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7310206. DOI.

Veerappan A; Oskuei A; Crowley G; Mikhail M; Ostrofsky D; Gironda Z; Vaidyanathan S; Wadghiri YZ; Liu M; Kwon S; Nolan A. World Trade Center-Cardiorespiratory and Vascular Dysfunction: Assessing the Phenotype and Metabolome of a Murine Particulate Matter Exposure Model. Sci Rep. 2020 Feb 21;10(1):3130. PubMed PMID: 32081898; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7035300. DOI.

Funding Sources

The World Trade Center Particulate Matter–Induced Cardiorespiratory and Vascular Dysfunction: A Multiomic Approach study is funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (grant number U01OH011855); the FDNY World Trade Center Health Program; the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; and the Stony Wold-Herbert Fund, Inc.

Contact Us

If you have questions about our project, please email Anna Nolan, MD, principal investigator, at NolanLab_Carvd@NYULangone.org.