GDF15 and myocardial infarction: Because GDF-15 levels are known to be associated with myocardial infarcts and other cardiovascular diseases,[14,15] we performed sensitivity analyses of their independent associations with CeVD by repeating the multivariate regression analyses after excluding subjects with cardiovascular diseases (total n = 48, including 5 NCI, 24 CIND and 19 dementia, see Table 1).