Biomechanical Assessment of Contractility of the Human Myocardium, V1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Profiling Biomechanical Responses and Workload of the Human Myocardium to Explore the Concept of Myocardial Fatigue and Reversibility (POWER study)
IRAS ID
291604
Contact name
Prithwish Banerjee
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Research & Development- UHCW
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 1 months, 1 days
Research summary
Why is this study important?
Heart failure (HF) remains a global health problem but its understanding is incomplete. It is not fully understood why some patients develop HF without evidence of heart damage, while others are non-responsive to conventional treatment. One explanation may be the presence of high resistance in the arteries, resulting in our hypothesis of the heart becoming fatigued but without significant damage to its muscles. It is speculated that ‘heart fatigue’ arises if it constantly pumps into a high-resistant arterial circuit such as in uncontrolled high blood pressure. By reversing this promptly, the heart can rest and may potentially recover.What is being studied?
By assessing the behaviour of heart cells as they contract and relax under different loads, we will examine if there is a threshold and time-point at which fatigue occurs, and whether they recover from fatigue. Additionally, we will investigate the effects of heart strengthening drugs during these states.How will this be conducted?
Heart muscle slices and cells will be processed from tissue samples obtained from consented patients undergoing cardiac surgery and donor hearts from deceased individuals. These will be analysed at Coventry University where state-of-the-art equipment is used to undertake physiological and biomechanical assessment of the heart cell/muscle contracting and relaxing under different conditions. We will also mimic the behaviour of a beating heart in the laboratory to generate physiologically relevant data to understand this human heart disease.What are the potential benefits?
If the notion of myocardial fatigue holds true, it will provide a novel framework in understanding specific HF groups and guide early recognition to prevent irreversible HF. From a research perspective, the study will help to establish a reproducible model that mimics the behaviour of the heart to better understand human heart diseases and their responses to drug treatments.REC name
Wales REC 7
REC reference
21/WA/0138
Date of REC Opinion
4 May 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion