A new $11.2 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will enable researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore and three other centers to improve the treatment of chronic heart failure. This multifaceted research program is the largest effort of its kind to focus on a basic question in heart failure whether nutritional changes impact heart function helping patients with a failing heart.
The heart, like the rest of the body, needs fuel to work properly.Food is transformed into the electrical energy that causes the heart to pump during metabolism. Impaired metabolism is both a cause and effect of heart failure. Cell structures known as mitochondria are at the center of the process.
"Years of untreated high blood pressure or loss of cardiac tissue and scarring after a heart attack cause certain mitochondria to develop defects," says William C. Stanley, Ph.D., professor of medicine and director of cardiovascular sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who leads the research program. "Different substances from food affect the mitochondria in different ways. We want to improve those defective mitochondria and prevent the mitochondria from going bad when they are constantly under stress."
Dr. Stanley and investigators at three other institutions, Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, and New York Medical College, have collaborated for 10 years. Their work, funded with a previous NIH grant, has already produced 85 peer-reviewed journal publications and has provided many insights into the causes and results of heart failure.
Dr. Stanley and his team will investigate new dietary changes to prevent and treat heart failure. Their hypothesis is that the electrical abnormalities that lead to heart failure can be reversed by consumption of a diet low in carbohydrates and sugar, and high in polyunsaturated fat. "We want to figure out how to improve this transfer of energy so the function of the heart is maintained in the early stages of heart failure or even before heart failure has been established," he says.
Writer: Walaika Haskins
Source: Dr. William Stanley, U of MD School of Medicine