Understanding why women and men recover differently after a heart attack

Investigating sexually dimorphic mechanisms of injury in cardiac ischaemia and reperfusion

Before the menopause, women are much more likely to survive a heart attack compared to men of the same age. They are also less likely to have long-term damage. However, after the menopause, men and women’s risk of death or long-term heart damage are similar. It’s long been assumed that this is because female hormones such as oestrogen play a heart protective role, but the exact reasons for this are unclear. Dr Rainbow and his team at the University of Leicester have shown that women’s heart muscle cells are naturally protected against the damage caused by a heart attack compared to heart cells taken from men of the same age. But if you treat heart muscle cells from men with female hormones, the men’s heart muscle cells also become protected against the damage. In this project they will investigate how the female hormones reach their targets (called receptors) in heart cells taken from male and female rats, and how this is linked to heart protection. Specifically, they will look at the effects of drugs that not only directly affect the oestrogen receptor in a conventional way, but also drugs that affect related molecules or that block the activity of oestrogen to see how this changes the ability to protect the heart’s cells. The study could pave the way towards new drugs used to protect the hearts of people who have a heart attack.