Pagano JJ, et al. - In this retrospective, cross-sectional, observational study, the researchers assessed the effects of gender, age, and presence of heart failure risk factors on myocardial native T₁ and extracellular volume fraction (ECV). They used linear regression to evaluate associations between age and T₁ measurements. Regardless of gender or the presence of factors for heart failure, native T₁ and ECV measured with SAturation recovery single-SHot Acquisition (SASHA) did not vary with age. It was observed that native T₁ and ECV were higher in healthy women than men, but did not differ in the presence of risk factors, proposing a different myocardial response to risk factors between genders.