By preserving more of the healthy heart tissue, we hope that we can give people who survive a heart attack an improved quality of life
-Dr Thomas Krieg from the University of Cambridge, a co-author of the study
Tests in mice have shown that the compound, called MitoSNO, protects heart tissue from reperfusion injury, which occurs when blood flow is restored suddenly after a prolonged period without oxygen. The research was published in the journal Nature Medicine.
All of the 100,000 people a year in the UK who suffer a heart attack will experience reperfusion injury. During a heart attack, the major vessels that supply the heart with blood become blocked, preventing oxygen from reaching an area of the heart tissue. When the patient reaches hospital, doctors remove the blockage using medicines or surgery and restore blood flow to the heart.
By this stage, some damage will already have occurred to the oxygen-starved tissue. But most of the damage actually happens when the blood supply is returned suddenly, triggering the production of harmful molecules, called free radicals, in the cell’s powerhouse – the mitochondria1.
MitoSNO works by briefly ‘switching off’ the mitochondria in the first few minutes after blood flow is returned to prevent a build-up of free radicals that can kill heart cells. To achieve this, MitoSNO is designed to accumulate inside heart mitochondria rapidly after its injection into the blood.
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Image Credit: British Heart Foundation
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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