Novel drug for people with heart failure

Heart failure is a condition in which the heart’s muscle gets injured from something like a heart attack or high blood pressure and gradually loses its ability to pump enough blood to supply the body’s needs.

This leads to retention of extra fluid in the body, or “congestion.”

According to the Heart Failure Society of America, heart failure affects more than 6 million people in the United States over the age of 20. It also accounts for more than 8% of all heart disease deaths in the country.

Although there is currently no cure for heart failure, research has contributed to a better understanding of the condition.

StudiesTrusted Source have shown that certain parts of the body called peripheral chemoreceptors, which typically regulate breathing, can be hyperactive in people with heart failure, leading to worsening heart failure and problems such as sleep apnea (a condition in which breathing stops and restarts multiple times during sleep).

One of these peripheral chemoreceptors is the carotid bodyTrusted Source, a cluster of sensors near the carotid artery in the throat. In response to reduced blood flow and oxygen circulation, the sensors trigger rapid breathing and increased blood pressure by activating the sympathetic (“fight-or-flight”) nervous system.

Julian F.R. Paton, PhD, a professor of translational physiology at the University of Auckland (Waipapa Taumata Rau), New Zealand, explained to Medical News Today that these sympathetic nerve signals “are good when you need to accelerate your heart rate and escape from a threatening situation, but they are deleterious in heart failure, reducing blood flow to the heart and thicken and stiffen heart muscle, [thus] worsening its performance as a pump.”

Researchers have found that ablating or removing carotid bodies can improve heart function and survival in ratsTrusted Source and humansTrusted Source with heart failure. However, this approach may have risks and could disrupt important bodily functions.

In a new studyTrusted Source published in Nature Communications, Paton and his fellow researchers looked at a way to reduce the damaging sympathetic activity of the carotid bodies by using a drug instead of removing them. The researchers induced heart failure in juvenile (4 weeks old) male Wistar rats.

They then examined petrosal neurons in heart failure rats and other rats. A petrosal neuron is a type of nerve cell that acts as a “wire” between the carotid body and the central nervous system.

The researchers reported that these neurons had more P2X3 receptors in the rats with heart failure than in the rats without heart failure.

They also observed spontaneous bursts of nerve activity in the carotid sinus nerve that were associated with breathing problems and increased heart rate.

MNT