Heart Effects

May 1, 2008

Heart attack patients may one day treat hypertension and clear up scarring on their heart muscle with the same medication.

Testing a new class of blood pressure drugs, University of Florida researchers have been working to enhance a key enzyme called Ace-2. The enhanced Ace-2 enzyme helps relax blood vessels. But researcher David Ostrov and his team found that the enzyme has another more surprising effect.

Ostrov: “Not only did these compounds work in terms of reducing blood pressure and lowering heart rate, but they had a dramatic result that was not entirely anticipated and that result is that we are actually capable of reversing fibrosis, which means we are actually capable of reversing scarring in the heart and the kidney.”

When the study began, researchers had thought the enzyme might stop or inhibit that scarring, but it proved even more successful than that.

Ostrov: “If you think about it, we’re reversing scarring. There are currently no drugs capable of reversing scarring in any context that I’m aware of. But apparently this drug we’ve discovered has that property.”

Human trials may not start for several years, but researchers say their results suggest they may have found a key to combatting various forms of scarring.

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