Alternative Medicine Offers New Hope to Heart Disease Patients

Time halted at the European Football Championship last summer, when football player Christian Eriksen unexpectedly fell, passed away, and was revived on live television. The buzzing tension that had filled the air vanished in seconds. And in no time, millions of people worldwide were aware of the danger posed by cardiovascular diseases, the leading cause of mortality in the western world, according to the WHO.

Death in Young Athletes During Physical Activity

Young athletes who experience cardiac failure are often due to a health condition known as Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC). Half of all cases of sudden cardiac arrest in athletes occurring during physical activity are assumed to be caused by ARVC.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen present new insights on a process involved in disease development in a recent study. According Professor Alicia Lundby, whose research team was responsible for the current study, they also propose a prospective therapy plan.

“We have identified a previously unknown disease mechanism in ARVC, which adds a new layer of information that no one knew about,” she says.

A flaw deep inside the cardiac cells’ nuclei, which controls the contraction of the heart muscle, is the previously unidentified mechanism. Cell death is the result of the defect's knock-on effects.

“Based on the new insights we obtained, we identified a molecule that may be able to slow down disease progression,” says Alicia Lundby from the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen.

Alicia Lundby and her associates examined heart samples from healthy people and patients with inherited ARVC. They thoroughly and supposedly molecularly profiled the cardiac samples and discovered the molecular variations between the hearts. They developed disease-cause hypotheses based on these measures. They evaluated them using mouse models and heart muscle cells produced from stem cells.

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The report was released in the prestigious journal of cardiology called Circulation.

Halting the Progress of Cardiovascular Diseases

The scientists discovered that they could stop the progression of ARVC by turning on a particular molecule called sirtuin-3. So, they began looking for a molecule with that property.

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And they discovered it using honokiol. Honokiol, a natural substance derived from the tulip tree’s bark and leaves, has been utilized in traditional Asian medicine, including as a painkiller. “When we tested honokiol on our mouse model, it really did slow down the development of the disease. The same happened in our stem cell-derived heart cells. We do not know if it works the same with humans, but the fact that we can confirm the effect in two different models makes it very interesting,” says Alicia Lundby. “It is really satisfying to take a project all the way from very basic science measurements, through interpretation of the results to coming up with a possible strategy to mitigate the disease progression and finally demonstrate that it works. To me, this is truly the essence of the type of research I am excited about, namely, to shed light on the mechanisms behind heart disease such that we can propose novel treatment strategies,” she says.

“Doing the types of studies we do, analyzing several thousands of proteins at a time, is challenging when trying to understand what the changes we measure mean. This part of the work requires delving into the scientific literature. So, you read and read and read. And talk to colleagues, think and read some more. It is months of detective work. And it’s both stimulating and frustrating at times. Because it is certainly not straightforward.”

The effort does not end here. A follow-up study by the researchers aims to investigate their findings.

“We believe our findings are significant, and we want to determine whether they can help patients. The next step is to determine whether the mechanism we identified is present in all ARVC patients,” says Alicia Lundby.

Source-Medindia