Heart Healing Natural Protein Discovered

British researchers have discovered a naturally occurring protein which, according to them, can protect the heart from suffering cellular damage following a heart attack. The researchers report their findings in the journal Cell Death and Differentiation.

Heart disease is the most common cause of death in the UK with more than a quarter of a million heart attacks reported each year. The chief cause of heart attacks is the blockage of any one of the coronary arteries that carry oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle.

When the blood supply is cut-off, lack of oxygen causes death of a part of the heart muscle. This can lead to further complications such as heart failure and even death. Drugs such as aspirin that work by thinning the blood to improve flow and thrombolytics that dissolve clots in the artery are already available for preventing and minimising the damage caused by a heart attack.

However, being chemical concoctions, these drugs also have certain side effects. If a protein that occurs naturally in the body can be used to carry out the same tasks that these drugs perform, it could make a lot of difference in the way heart attack patients are treated.

For their study, researchers led by Dr. Costanza Emanueli looked at nerve growth factor (NGF), a natural protein that was earlier thought to act only on nerve cells in the body. There is already growing evidence that NGF acts on heart muscles as well and the researchers wanted to confirm the same.

The researchers stimulated a heart attack in laboratory mice and then injected the gene for NGF into the hearts of the animals. They found that the injection arrested the heart cells dying off. Based on these promising results, the researchers are hopeful that the same treatment can be used positively in humans.

“This is the first time that a pro-survival effect of NGF in the heart has been found,” Dr. Emanueli said. “Some other growth factors are already used clinically to treat different diseases, and our study shows that NGF may be a novel way of protecting the heart from further damage following a heart attack.”

Professor Jeremy Pearson of the British Heart Foundation, which provided funding for the work said, “Dr Emanueli’s research opens up the exciting and unexpected possibility of helping to repair damaged hearts by using a natural factor previously only thought to help nerves grow.”

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