Intractable Heart Failure may be Prevented by Blood Compound

A chemical compound found normally in the blood may help treat and prevent an intractable form of heart failure

A chemical compound found normally in the blood may help treat and prevent an intractable form of heart failure, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine have claimed.

The mouse model-based study has been published in the February issue of Circulation.

Heart Attack - Overview
Heart attack is the death of the heart muscle due to loss of blood supply. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Other names for heart attack include acute myocardial infarction, coronary thrombosis, and coronary occlusion.

In heart failure the heart is unable to pump effectively and cannot meet the body's need for blood and oxygen. It is really two diseases, each with about half of all patients, says Dr. Samuel Dudley, professor of medicine and physiology at UIC and chair of the section of cardiology. Systolic heart failure occurs when the heart can no longer contract effectively. In diastolic heart failure, the heart is unable to relax after contraction.

"Although we have a number of treatments for systolic heart failure, there are no approved treatments at all for diastolic heart failure, a deadly disease with a 60 percent mortality rate five years after diagnosis," said Dudley.

Hypertension is the cause in the overwhelming majority of diastolic heart failure cases.

Diet, Lifestyle and Heart Disease
The correlation between diet, lifestyle and heart disease. The importance of balanced diet life style and exercise for controlling heart disease.

"We know from previous studies that nitric oxide (NO) is necessary for blood vessel relaxation," said Dudley, "and that hypertension can lead to a decrease of NO in blood vessels."

Dudley and his colleagues knew that-in blood vessels-the problem was depletion of a chemical called tetrahydrobiopterin, or BH4, which is needed for the tissues to make NO.

An Active Heart
The heart pumps blood constantly providing the power to sustain life.

"We decided to try thinking of the heart as a huge blood vessel that might also be unable to make the NO it needed due to long-term hypertension, and see if adding BH4 could make a difference," said Dudley.

They found that by giving mice BH4 they were not only able to prevent diastolic heart failure from developing, but to restore function to the heart after the fact.

Animation of heart attack symptoms
Heart attack can cause symptoms such as Chest pain or discomfort, Shortness of breath and pain in neck, back, arm, or shoulder and is due to blockage of blood supply to the heart muscles

"We are very excited about the possibilities of developing therapies for human heart failure based on BH4," said Dudley.

Source-ANI
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