An enlarged heart should be able to process more blood and generally have more power than a medium-sized heart, but reality tells us something else.
This is a real disease, called an enlarged heart, which can in turn be caused by various factors, including hypertension.
The heart muscle becomes thicker and harder over time until it reaches heart failure: the heart can no longer contract normally and pump the necessary amount of blood throughout the body.
A new study, conducted by researchers at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine (LKSOM) at Temple University, announces the discovery of a new key factor that would support the regulation of normal heart growth.
This regulator, called FoxO1, which is part of the Fox family of proteins, was described in a study published in Circulation. According to the researchers, this transcription factor binds to various genes found in heart cells and can lead to increased activation in growth signaling.
“Our observations mostly highlighted the underestimated mechanisms of pathological heart growth,” says Jessica Pfleger, director of the study. “From a therapeutic point of view, more work is needed to correctly target FoxO1, since it is intimately involved in the activation of many genes associated with heart growth.
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