With a $9.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, researchers from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and New York Medical College seek to understand what goes wrong with the heart's power system during heart failure. When the program is completed in five years, the researchers hope to take the knowledge gained from their laboratory studies and use it to begin human studies to test drugs that may help the heart beat stronger in patients suffering from heart failure.

Despite advances in treatment, heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for almost 41 percent of all deaths. In the United States, nearly five million people are diagnosed with heart failure. More than a half million new cases are diagnosed annually and 250,000 deaths are attributed to the disease.

William Stanley, Ph.D., associate professor of physiology and biophysics at the Case medical school, is the principal investigator of the new research program which will build on a foundation of findings that came out of his laboratory and those of his co-investigators. Normally, the heart obtains its energy from fat (readers should not misconstrue this as an endorsement for a fatty diet). During heart failure, however, the researchers found that the dying heart at the end of life doesn't use much fat for energy. In fact, different genes turn on and literally change the heart cells to consume glucose (a type of sugar) for energy, which is actually a more efficient fuel.

This phenomenon does not occur in early stages of heart failure, only in the end stage of the disease. The finding raised the questions of whether or not this change is good for the heart, and what would happen if the change occurred earlier. If it did, could the heart pump more blood and help heart failure patients feel better? That is what the researchers hope to answer with four projects that c
'"/>

Contact: George Stamatis
George.Stamatis@case.edu
216-368-3635
Case Western Reserve University
20-Feb-2004

Page: 1 2 3
Related biology news :

1. Researchers determine genetic cause of Timothy syndrome
2. Researchers find color sensitive atomic switch in bacteria
3. Researchers identify protein promoting vascular tumor growth
4. Researchers devise potent new tools to curb ivory poaching
5. Researchers create nanotubes that change colors, form nanocarpet and kill bacteria
6. Researchers ID chlorophyll-regulating gene
7. Researchers develop fast track way to discover how cells are regulated
8. Researchers identify distinctive signature for metastatic prostate cancer
9. Researchers report new gene test for isolated cleft lip and palate
10. Researchers discover why mutant gene causes colon cancer
11. Researchers identify the genomes controlling elements