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Nearly 100,000 more people with cardiovascular disease than expected have died since the start of the pandemic in England, according to our analysis published today.

RESEARCH

University of St Andrews | Dr Samantha Pitt

In healthy people, calcium is released from large stores in heart cells through specialised ‘gates’ called ryanodine receptors. The release of calcium into the cell causes the heart to beat strongly. But in patients with heart failure, calc...

RESEARCH

University of Aberdeen | Professor Stefan Hoppler

After damage from a heart attack, the heart is unable to repair itself. Instead the damaged area turns into scar tissue, irreparably affecting the heart’s function. Understanding how heart muscle is first built in the developing embryo coul...

RESEARCH

University of Cambridge | Dr Murray Clarke

Atherosclerosis is the build-up of fatty material inside arteries, and it causes most heart attacks and strokes. An important process in atherosclerosis is inflammation within the blood vessel wall. This is thought to be caused in part by d...

We’ve been funding research to find signals in the blood that could help doctors identify people at risk of heart and circulatory diseases and find new treatments.

Browse a list of heart condition information pages produced by BHF’s specialised team of professors, researchers, cardiologists and nurses.

Denis Collen, 60, from Stanmore, Middlesex, shares how a diagnosis of heart failure and diabetes spurred him to make healthy lifestyle changes.

RESEARCH

Queen Mary, University of London | Professor Philip Eaton

The build-up of scar tissue in the heart in response to injury such as a heart attack - a process called fibrosis - is a contributing factor to heart failure. During this process, some heart muscle cells change their identity and become fi...

RESEARCH

University of Oxford | Professor Shoumo Bhattacharya

Occasionally, a virus or bacterial infection can lead to severe and potentially fatal inflammation of the heart muscle known as autoimmune myocarditis. There is currently no specific treatment for this condition. However, Professor Shoumo B...

RESEARCH

University of Leicester | Dr Noel W Davies

Blood pressure is maintained by the contraction of smooth muscle cells (in blood vessels called vasoconstriction) which in turn depends on an electrical difference being maintained between the inside and outside of vascular smooth muscle (t...