An Enzyme To Prevent Heart Attacks

By Cara

Friday, March 12, 2010, 14:31

New ways of treating heart problems have been demonstrated in theory by the researchers of Iowa university. Researchers have said a known enzyme called calmodulin kinase II (CaM kinase) has a positive effect on the heart function.

CaM kinase helps regulate calcium, which is essential to heart functions, but CaM kinase's calcium connection can also create problems that lead to irregular heart beats and cell death.

This new finding suggests a specific way to keep the wanted CaM kinase effects but at the same time eliminate the bad effects.

Most patients with heart failure risk a sudden death. Figuring out how and why heart failure happens is a major goal for academic medicine.

For the study, researchers used rabbit heart cells, which behave much like human heart cells, and demonstrated that if CaM kinase can prevent interaction with a protein that regulates calcium channels, negative effects, including cell death, will not occur.