Heart failure research, from bench to bedside
- Nearly one million people in the UK have heart failure.
- Each year, 65,000 people are diagnosed with the condition.
- In 2005/06 the BHF invested over £4 million on research into heart failure and heart muscle function.
Heart failure - from lab bench to bedside
Professor Michael Frenneaux’s important research aims to improve the health and quality of life of heart failure sufferers across the UK.
Action
Professor Michael Frenneaux, BHF Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Birmingham, is one of the UK's leading cardiovascular physiologists. His work is respected and quoted worldwide. He builds on fundamental laboratory research and ‘translates’ it into a clinical setting – taking it from lab bench to bedside. An important area of his work centres on a revolutionary way of treating heart failure that stems from research by other BHF scientists, who developed an exciting new theory for heart failure.
Research in Oxford, led by another BHF Chair, Professor Hugh Watkins, observed that in heart failure there are defects in energy production in the heart muscle cells. Professor Frenneaux predicted that if we could correct this defect with medical therapy, we might improve the performance of failing hearts and give sufferers their quality of life back.
In normally functioning hearts, fats are used to produce 60-90% of the energy generated. There is increasing evidence that perhexiline, an established but now little used anti-angina drug, has the effect of swapping the heart’s main energy source to sugar. Processing sugar instead of fat as fuel uses about 30% less oxygen and Professor Frenneaux, seeing the potential to reduce the energy burden on the failing heart, received crucial BHF funding to carry out pilot studies testing his hypothesis.
Impact
The results so far are very promising. In a study published in late 2005, patients who were already on currently available optimum drug therapy and also took perhexiline, showed a substantial improvement in exercise capacity and in the pump function of their hearts.
Next steps
We aim to fund more than £60 million on research in 2006/07. We intend to continue supporting this particular area through a portfolio of work, including that of Professor Frenneaux, who will continue his research to see whether, as well as improving symptoms, perhexiline actually increases the lifespan of heart patients. He will also examine its immediate effects across different groups of patients and other heart conditions, including the inherited condition hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
If further research leads to investment by the pharmaceutical industry to carry out a major trial on perhexiline, it could have a huge impact on heart failure treatment. Professor Frenneaux’s preliminary studies show great potential for a therapy that could complement current drugs to restore independence and improve the quality of life of thousands of people. It also points the way for further research into the fundamental mechanisms in heart failure and the development of new drugs to modify them.
The BHF plays a crucial role in funding pilot research, which could eventually be taken up by the pharmaceutical industry. But to do this we need your continued support.