Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden have recently conducted a clinical study that reveals the hunger hormone ghrelin can boost the heart’s pump capacity in heart failure patients.
The study, which was published in the European Heart Journal, sheds light on a new potential treatment for millions of people worldwide who suffer from heart failure.
Heart failure is a condition where the heart muscle is weakened, making it difficult to pump enough blood throughout the body to provide sufficient oxygen and nutrients. Although treatments are available to slow its progression, there are no methods that can directly increase the heart’s pump function.
Ghrelin, an endogenous hormone that stimulates growth hormone release and increases appetite, is believed to hold great promise in enhancing the heart’s pump function due to its receptors that are present in cardiac muscle tissues.
“Heart failure is the most common cause of hospitalisation in older generations and is associated with a poor quality of life and high mortality,” says principal investigator Lars Lund. “If we can find ways to increase the heart’s pump function, we can potentially improve life quality and prognosis for these patients.”
The Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden conducted a double-blind study on 30 patients with heart failure at their cardiology unit. The patients were randomly assigned to two groups, with one group receiving an active treatment of ghrelin and the other group receiving a placebo intravenously for two hours. The study followed up with the participants after two to five days.
The results showed that after two hours of treatment, the ghrelin group had an average increase of 28 percent in cardiac output, which was significantly higher than the small reduction observed in the placebo group. The researchers found that the reason for this increase was due to more blood being pumped per beat from the heart, despite the heart rate remaining the same or slightly slower. The follow-up after two to five days showed that the pump capacity was 10 percent higher in the ghrelin group than in the placebo group.
According to the researchers, there were no serious adverse reactions observed during the clinical study. However, the ghrelin group did exhibit slightly elevated levels of a heart-failure biomarker, the reasons for which remain unknown. Further studies will be required to determine if there is a direct connection between the elevated biomarker levels and the use of ghrelin. As the patient group was small and the follow-up period was short, the effectiveness of the treatment in a larger cohort over a longer period of time is difficult to estimate.
To investigate the underlying mechanisms responsible for the observed increase in heart function, the researchers conducted laboratory experiments on mouse heart cells. The results showed that treatment with ghrelin led to an increase in the contractile function of heart cells, and the researchers were able to identify a novel molecular mechanism behind this effect.
The researchers behind the groundbreaking study are now aiming to conduct larger clinical trials to further test the efficacy of using ghrelin to increase heart function in patients with heart failure. To aid in this effort, they have partnered with the KI incubator KI Innovations to launch AnaCardio, a start-up focused on developing molecules that activate ghrelin receptors and potentially improve heart pump function.
Source: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehad100
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