Heart Failure
Heart failure occurs when the heart muscle is
too weak to pump as efficiently as it should.
It is estimated that it affects 901,500 middle-aged and elderly
men and women in the UK, most of which have permanent,
irreversible, damage to the pump function of the heart. In rare
cases it also affects the young.
Until recently, doctors were helpless in the battle against
heart failure. No medicines existed to improve the life expectancy
of heart failure patients.
Medical breakthroughs
The discovery of a class of medicines called ACE
inhibitors has been a major advance.
Benefit of ACE inhibitors
The AIRE study led by BHF Chair Professor Stephen Ball,
helped to prove the benefit of the ACE inhibitor
drugs in patients with heart failure after heart attack. Doctors
now prescribe them as mandatory therapy for heart failure and they
usually lead to a substantial improvement in quality of life and
outlook for patients.
Blood test to rule out heart failure
In 2003 a simple blood test to rule out heart failure was
recommended for patients in England and Wales. The value of the
test for B-type natriuretic peptide was partly proven by BHF-funded
research from Edinburgh and Glasgow. More complicated and
inconvenient tests can now be avoided in many patients.
Medicine to improve failing heart’s energy
BHF experts have been working on the hypothesis that failing
hearts have difficulty in producing energy. BHF Professor
Michael Frenneaux is
testing a medicine that he hopes will reduce this burden and
relieve symptoms. In pilot studies of the treatment (called
perhexiline), patients who could only walk slowly, for short
distances, on flat ground, could walk at a reasonable pace for
further and even manage a flight of steps.
Professor Frenneaux is seeking funding from industry to take the
research forward into large-scale trials.
What next?
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.
The BHF fund a wide portfolio of heart failure research,
including studies towards helping the heart regenerate itself with
our bodies’ own stem cells - an exciting future goal that would
prevent the need for surgery.
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