Genetics of heart failure

Published by Travis Wilson on

Heart Failure (HF) affects more than 6 million people in the United States. HF is when the heart does not work like it should. Heart attacks, high blood pressure, and heart disease can all cause HF. Genes may also play a role in HF. Most of the time, we treat HF with a healthy lifestyle and/or prescription drugs. The good news is people with HF are living longer. The bad news is 1 out of 2 people still die within 5 years after diagnosis. Your heart has four chambers. The top chambers are the atria. The lower chambers are the ventricles. Your heart pumps in two phases. In the first phase, the ventricles push blood to the rest of the body. This is when your heart beats, or contracts. This is systole. In the second phase, the ventricles relax and blood moves from the atria to refill them. This is diastole. The right side of your heart pumps blood to the lungs to get oxygen. The left side pumps blood with oxygen to the body. In most people with HF, the left side is the side that has problems. Your body does not get enough oxygen or nutrients. We classify HF by what causes it. If the heart cannot pump with enough force, it is systolic failure. If the ventricles cannot relax like they should, it is diastolic HF. In both cases, blood is not pumped out of the heart well. As a result, blood can back up in the lungs and the rest of the body. This can make it hard to breathe, especially during exercise. Swollen ankles are another symptom. Diastolic dysfunction, or DD, is stiffness of the heart. This can lead to either type of HF. It can affect how the heart pumps, or squeezes. But, since the heart cannot relax, DD is often the major problem in diastolic HF. Scientists at Vanderbilt will use BioVU to study HF. They will look for adult HF patients with and without DD. They will check for links between certain gene changes and each type of HF. This information could help doctors figure out who is most at risk for each type of HF. It may also lead to new treatments for certain types of HF. It could even lead to ways to prevent HF.

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