According to the results of a recent research, to connect the aging of the heart with the emergence of heart failure – andassociated cardiac hypertrophy – it’s a dysfunctional change in organ metabolismthat it leaves without energy needed to pump blood a in the milk regime. In the study, published in the journal Circulation Researchresearchers have identified a switch which governs this change in metabolism and they demonstrated that by inhibiting its action it is possible, at least in laboratory studies, improve heart function.
The research was coordinated by Gianluigi Condorelli, director of Cardio Center at Humanitashead of the Laboratory of Immunology and Inflammation in Cardiovascular Diseases and full professor of Humanitas University, in collaboration with Roberto Papait associate professor at the University of Insubria.
Heart failure: if the heart runs out of fuel
Lo heart failure it’s a pathology Very widespread and disabling: 600,000 people live with it in Italy, one in ten over 65 years of age, and it constitutes, in industrialized countriesthe main cause of disability and death in elderly people.
Although there are today several therapies capable of slow down the progression of the disease – such as ACE inhibitors, sartans, antialdosterones or beta-blockers – the search for new, more effective therapeutic solutions is one of the main challenges in cardiologyto which several Humanitas projects and laboratories are dedicated.
«Thanks to the studies conducted over the last twenty years it has gradually been understood that at the basis of the decompensation cardiac there is a energy problem: the decompensated heart is a heart that is ran out of fuel – explains the prof. Gianluigi Condorelli -. This is even more relevant if you consider that the heart is one of the most energy-intensive organs in the body, along with the brain and muscles. For twitch on average 60 times per minutesupplying every millimeter of our vascular system with blood, needs a lot of energy.”
Not by chancemany gods drugs used for the treatment of heart failure – such as ACE inhibitors or beta-blockers – work because they allow the heart to save energy, making better use of the energy resources reduced due to the disease. But what causes this reduction in energy available? And why is this more likely to happen during aging?
Research reveals one of the regulators of the heart’s energy balance
Is called p300 and it is a so-called gene enhancer. Gene enhancers are gods regulators of cell behaviorbecause their presence increases the probability that some genes will be activated.
In particular, according to the results of the study published on Circulation Researchp300 – whose activity comes intensified during aging – alters the metabolism of heart cellssimulating a condition of reduced oxygen supply to cells and shifting their energy needs to the consumption of sugars: a less efficient energy source, which leaves the heart without energy it needs, contributing to the onset of heart failure.
Per try this hypothesis, researchers have tried to turn off the action of p300 via an inhibitor and they got a partial recovery of cardiac function. Although this is a study limited for now to laboratory models of the disease, i achieved results they open new avenues for research into the treatment of heart failure.
«Although aging constitutes the primary cause of heart failure, the explanation for this link has long eluded doctors and researchers. Today we know a extra piece of this complex puzzle: as we age, heart cells change their energy metabolism in a disadvantageous way. This is the first step to develop new therapies that reduce the risk of heart failure in old age”, states the prof. Roberto Papait.
Humanitas numbers
2023-10-26 09:10:26
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