A group of researchers from the Texas Heart Institute (United States) have discovered, through an experiment carried out with laboratory mice, that the heart has a capacity for regeneration that was previously unknown .
Their study, which has been published in the journal Nature , explains that they were able to reverse, within six weeks, a severe heart failure that they had previously induced in the heart of rodents. How did they do it? Silencing the activity of Hippo, a signaling or communication pathway that exists within the heart cells and that prevents the proliferation and regeneration of cardiomycytes – heart muscle cells capable of spontaneously and individually contracting.
What happens during a heart attack? As the blood stops flowing through the tissues of this vital organ, the affected areas end up dying due to a shortage of oxygen. The point is that the heart cells do not regenerate, but the dead tissue is replaced with scars made of cells that do not help it in its ability to pump because they do not contract. The heart becomes progressively weaker, and, in fact, most people who have suffered a severe heart attack will develop heart failure that will be life-threatening in the future.
First cause of death in the world
This new advance is important, since cardiovascular diseases continue to be the leading cause of death in the world: they cause a third of deaths worldwide, according to a study published a few months ago in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and signed by Dr. Gregory Roth, University of Washington (USA). And Spain is not getting rid of these dire statistics: in our country more than 117,000 people per year die from this type of ailments , according to data from the Spanish Heart Foundation (FEC).
In the same vein, James Martin, co-author of the research carried out by the Texas Heart Institute, says: “Heart failure continues to be the leading cause of death in heart disease.” It also emphasizes that “the best treatment we have today for this situation is the implantation of a ventricular assist device or carry out a heart transplant, but the number of hearts available for these transplants is limited “.
“One of the interests of my laboratory is to develop ways to heal the heart by studying the pathways involved in heart development and regeneration,” adds Martin. “In this study, we investigated the Hippo, which, as we saw in Previous studies that we have done prevent the proliferation and regeneration of adult heart muscle cells “, he emphasizes.
For his part, John Leach, the lead author of the study, explains that “when patients suffer from heart failure, there is an increase in the activity of Hippo.” “This led us to think that if we disconnected it, we would be able to induce improvements in cardiac function,” he stresses. And that’s what they did with the mice. ” After six weeks, we observed that the injured hearts had recovered their pumping function at the level of the heart of the control mice , the healthy ones,” he adds.
These researchers have concluded that deactivating Hippo has a double function: it induces the muscle cells of the heart to proliferate and survive in the injured heart and the appearance of fibrosis is also altered . As they explain, they will need additional studies to be able to understand all these processes more precisely.
As always, prevention is much better than cure. In this sense, the World Health Organization (WHO) reminds us that it has been proven that quitting tobacco, reducing salt in our diet, consuming fruits and vegetables, exercising regularly and avoiding harmful alcohol consumption achieve reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.
