Analyzing blood flow in leg muscles can help detect cardiovascular disease earlier than standard tests.
- Heart insufficiency with preserved ejection fraction (ICFE) is a common condition, which evolves discreetly and has few symptoms until it becomes serious and difficult to treat.
- In mice suffering from heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFPEF) induced by diabetes, problems of blood flow regulation in the leg muscle appeared for months before similar problems were observed in the heart .
- During future work, scientists intend to test their particular type of MRI, which makes it possible to assess vasoreactivity in the heart and leg muscle, in human patients.
As we know: medical imaging examinations improve the ability to detect specific problems at the heart, such as stiffening or healing of heart tissue. However, they usually miss early signs showing problems in other parts of the body. Previous research has suggested that a poor regulation of blood flow in leg muscles could manifest itself before similar changes in the heart and could even explain symptoms, such as fatigue or difficulty in exercising.
Heart insufficiency: leg muscle could be a better place to detect the first stages
In order to explore this idea, scientists from the Biomedical Engineering Institute of the University of Toronto (Canada) have conducted experience on rats with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFPEF) induced by diabe . The animals were subjected to a diet rich in fats and sugars or a control diet for six months. From the first or second month following diabetes and every two months later, rodents underwent a particular type of MRI which makes it possible to assess vasoreactivity, that is to say the way the vessels Sanguins react to stress, in the heart and muscle of the leg. “A blood pool reduction agent has been administered and the relaxation time was dynamically measured while animals breathed high levels of carbon dioxide to modulate the vessels”, said the team in the study published in the journal Discover Medicine.
In diabetic rats, the heart that does not normally react to 10 % carbon dioxide revealed a pro-vasocstrctting response from five months after diabetes. The abnormal vasoreactivity of the skeletal muscles of the legs appeared even earlier. At two months, the usual vasodilator response at 5 % carbon dioxide was interrupted by periods of vasoconstriction in sick rodents. In female rats, differences were observed between healthy and patient animals only in the first two months after diabetes, but not later.
“Offer a new orientation in the treatment of a condition whose prevalence increases”
“Our work suggests that the vascular changes in the leg muscle could constitute an earlier and more accessible alert sign of the disease. The next step will be to follow human patients with the risk factors for heart failure to fractional fractional preserved ejection, which evolves discreetly, and to be determined if our type of MRI can actually identify the disease earlier than conventional diagnostic methods. Not only to open the way to early diagnosis when this disease can be treated, but also to offer a new orientation in the treatment of a condition whose prevalence increases and which has become the most common form of heart failure “, has concluded Hai-ling Margaret Chengwho led research.
