Heart Failure Treatment: New Research Shows How Protein May Help Fix This Condition

A discovery may change heart failure treatment and this is through a kind of protein that may help control calcium within heart cells, new research recently showed.

Debora Grant, as specified in a Deseret News report, hoped that after months of undergoing chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, and wide-ranging radiation treatment for her breast cancer, "her time in hospitals was over."

However, six years after recovering from breast cancer, a diagnosis of heart failure ruined her hopes, and Grant jumbled through losing combat against her own body for three years.

Grant, from Salt Lake City, said, it was to the point where she was not functioning. She could hardly get off the sofa. After she worked with the Division of Cardiology of the University of Utah, she, together with a team of doctors developed a regiment of drugs that massively enhanced her quality of life.

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Diagnosed with Atrial Fibrillation and Tachycardia

Grant needed to shift her energy though, from hiking and mountain biking to reading and gardening. Now, with the addition of atrial fibrillation and tachycardia to her diagnosis, Grant needs to pay out of pocket for costly treatments and medications.

As specified in this report, heart disease is a worldwide epidemic, affecting roughly three percent of the adult populace. It is common, prevalent, and fatal, with about 50 percent of patients suffering from heart failure expected to die within five years of diagnosis.

Even though Grant has several treatments that can support her illness, many treatments for heart failure are experimental, according to distinctive needs, and only designed for deferment of the inevitable conclusion.

But as mentioned, the said protein discovery by the University of Utah researchers may change such treatments as a whole.

VDAC2 Protein

The said researchers recently published the study on VDAC2 protein, Cardiac-specific deletion of voltage dependent anion channel 2 leads to dilated cardiomyopathy by altering calcium homeostasis, published in Nature Communications, that's helping regulate calcium that signals within heart cells.

Blockage of such signals results in severe damage of heart cell contraction, making it much more difficult for the organ to push blood through the body.

Removal of this protein made a function of the heart sharply decline in lab mice, eventually resulting in their death, whereas VDAC2 protein's reintroduction reversed a lot of the impacts of heart failure.

An investigational drug known as efsevin was able to generate the same effects on other mice which have heart failure.

According to the University of Utah's director of cardiovascular research, Stavros Drakos, there's promising evidence developing that this can occur as therapy and thus, they can recover the heart of a patient. Drakos added, they're "committed to the next step."

Extremely Vital Research for Utahns with Heart Failure

This particular research is exceptionally vital for Utahns suffering from heart failure. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2019, on averagely, around 77 people died from heart disease each week in Utah.

When COVID-19 hit, the number of patients suffering from heart failure who died grew much higher. The virus is even more fatal in heart failure patients compared to individuals with damaged hearts.

This report indicated, in any given hospital, 10 percent of the beds have patients who have a medical history of heart failure, even if their heart is not the reason for their emergency care.

Furthermore, even out of the hospital, studies have suggested that a lot of patients surviving from COVID-19 experience a certain type of impairment.

This then leaves experts apprehensive about a rise in heart failure conditions as the COVID-19 Delta variant brings the number of cases up in the entire state.

Role of Protein in Importing Calcium

Drakos, together with his team, initially noticed the VDAC2 protein by examining heart tissue from patients with hearts that had recovered from what they described as advanced heart failure.

From this observation, they got gained hints of something noticeably different, although not the mechanism by which it was occurring.

Eventually, the team discovered the said protein and saw the role it played in importing calcium to the mitochondria, the factory of energy present in the heart.

According to cardiologist Dr. Michael Cutler, a remarkable part of this research is that treatments that target this previously uncommon mechanism can enhance the ability of the heart to pump blood.

Related information about heart failure treatment is shown on TomoNews US's YouTube video below: