Heart Failure
When your heart muscle is too weak to pump as efficiently
as it should, heart failure can develop.
More than 700,000 people are affected by
heart failure in the UK, most of which
have permanent, irreversible damage to the way their heart pumps
blood.
Heart failure normally affects people when they're older, but in
rare cases it can also affect young people.
Until recently, doctors were helpless in the battle against
heart failure. No medicines existed to improve the life expectancy
of heart failure patients.
Now we're not only making breakthroughs in heart failure
medicines, but we want to spend £50 million over the next few years
to give hope to thousands of people
affected by heart failure after a heart attack.
Real breakthroughs
With the help of BHF-funded research there've been some real
breakthroughs, especially in the use of medicines called
ACE inhibitors.
BHF Professor Stephen Ball and
his team helped to prove the benefit of the ACE
inhibitor drugs in patients with heart failure after a heart
attack.
GPs now prescribe them as a matter of course for heart
failure, and they usually lead to a substantial improvement in
quality of life and outlook for patients.
Getting tested for heart failure used to be complicated for
heart patients. Another breakthrough we funded means that in
most cases we can now rule out heart failure with a simple blood
test which looks for B-type natriuretic peptide, or 'BNP'.
The future
At present the only cure for severe heart failure is a heart transplant.
However, there is a limited supply of organs and such a major surgical procedure can be risky.
Our experts have
been working on a theory that failing hearts have difficulty
producing energy.
Professor Michael Frenneaux is investigating a
medicine he hopes will reduce the burden of heart failure and
relieve the symptoms.
In pilot studies, the treatment (called perhexiline) saw
patients who could only walk slowly, for short
distances and on flat ground walk at a reasonable pace
for further and even manage a flight of steps.
We've also funded researchers at Harefield
Hospital who've investigated whether
a mechanical device that takes over the work of the heart
could
help failing hearts. Working with patients who have dilated cardiomyopathy, their work could
help us understand how to bring more hearts back from the
brink.
Stem cell research offers heart failure sufferers great hope for
the future. Successfully harnessing them could mean our
hearts will be able to repair themselves.
Professor Paul Riley is involved in some fascinating research
that's helping unravel how we might encourage heart
cells to regenerate or replace damaged tissue.
And the BHF Centre of Research Excellence
at Imperial College London is pioneering stem cell
research in the UK, led by BHF Professor
Michael Schneider and colleagues.
