Amyloid Proteins in Alzheimer’s Also Linked to Heart Failure
Amyloid beta - the protein plaques that are present in the brain with Alzheimer’s may also bring harm to the heart, according to new research.
The researchers found that some forms of heart failure are basically an Alzheimer’s disease in the heart. "They basically have the same biological defect. In one case, it affects the brain. In one case it affects the heart." said Dr Federica del Monte, the senior author of the study.
"We found that some forms of heart failure are basically an Alzheimer’s disease in the heart," del Monte said. "They basically have the same biological defect. In one case, it affects the brain. In one case it affects the heart."
22 people were involved in the study, who were, on average, 79 in age. All of them had Alzheimer’s. Examination of their brain revealed that people who have Alzheimer’s disease are likely to have increased thickness in the wall of their left ventricle, one of the lower chambers of the heart. According to the researchers, this is not a good thing because it reduces the ventricles’ capacity to expand and take in blood before it’s pumped out of the heart.
They say that the said risk factor is directly related to a condition called ‘heart failure with preserved ejection fraction’. It is a type of heart failure where the ventricles become too stiff over time to effectively draw blood into the heart, according to Alfred Bove - a cardiologist and professor emeritus with Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine in Philadelphia.
He added that amyloid beta proteins can contribute to this condition. "If the heart muscle has deposits of something in it, it will get stiffer," he explained. "If it doesn’t relax appropriately, it can produce heart failure even though the squeezing capacity of the heart muscle is still pretty intact."
Dr del Monte note that such negative effect could be due to the way amyloid beta affects the body’s use of calcium, a nutrient that’s important both to neuron transmission and contraction of the heart muscle.
The researchers the study needs to be replicated in a much larger scale to further understand how amyloid proteins - which are linked to Alzheimer’s disease - could also harm the heart.
Their findings were published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Source of this article:
Journal of the American College of Cardiology
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