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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