Treating heart conditions boosted by EU-funded study
An international team of EU-funded scientists has developed a new low-energy method for treating life-threatening cardiac arrhythmia, a group of conditions characterised by irregular electrical activity in the heart. With a funding boost of EUR 12 million as part of the 'Identification and therapeutic targeting of common arrhythmia trigger mechanisms' (EUTRIGTREAT) project funded under the 'Health' Theme of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), the team from Germany, France and the United States worked on reducing the energy required for defibrillation, a treatment that delivers a therapeutic dose of electrical energy to the heart for patients with cardiac arrhythmia. Traditional defibrillation works by delivering a strong electric pulse - often painful and damaging to the surrounding tissue, and forcing the heart back to its regular beating. However, the researchers' new technique, called 'LEAP' (Low-Energy Anti-fibrillation Pacing), uses a cardiac catheter to create a sequence of five weak electrical signals in the heart. A few seconds later the heart beats regularly again, meaning this method requires 84 % less pulse energy compared to conventional defibrillation. In a healthy functioning heart, electrical pulses propagate across the heart muscle at regular and controlled intervals that cause the heart's ventricles and atria to contract and relax again. However, for those who suffer from conditions in the cardiac arrhythmia group, electrical pulses are prone to propagating throughout the heart chaotically in an unsynchronised manner. This has the effect of hindering regular heartbeat and stopping a proper supply of blood from reaching all parts of the body. Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists explain how these research findings have implications for the development of painless therapy for life-threatening cardiac fibrillation. Even though LEAP and standard defibrillation seem to work in a similar way, in fact they initiate completely different processes within the heart. The classical defibrillator works by using a very strong electric field that excites all cells of the organ by applying a painful and potentially damaging high-energy shock to terminate all electrical signals at once, a process akin to turning a computer that doesn't work properly on and off again. LEAP on the other hand uses a sequence of low-energy pulses to progressively synchronise the tissue step by step. Natural heterogeneities within the heart such as blood vessels, fatty tissue or fibrotic tissue can act as the origins for synchronising waves, as the scientists showed in experiments and computer simulations during the study. Weak electrical pulses are enough to stimulate the cells in these regions, as with every additional pulse more heterogeneities are activated, which in turn stops the chaotic activity gradually. 'The heterogeneities act as small control sites that - once activated - can 'reprogram' the entire organ,' comments Valentin Krinsky, one of the researchers from the Institut Non-Linéaire de Nice. Over 10 million people across Europe and the United States are affected by atrial fibrillation, the most common cardiac arrhythmia. These research findings could also be relevant for the termination of ventricular fibrillation, a life-threatening arrhythmia, which is terminated only by external or implantable defibrillators. 'The development of LEAP is a groundbreaking result and an outstanding example of successful interdisciplinary collaboration between physicists and physician-scientists, with immediate impact on the development of novel therapies for life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias,' says one of the study's researchers Markus Zabel from the University Center Göttingen. The EUTRIGTREAT project is made up of a 15-partner consortium from Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. The overall aim is to carry out research that aims to better understand arrhythmia-initiating mechanisms and associated risk biomarkers. This knowledge will help prevent and treat patients at risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD).For more information, please visit:EUTRIGTREAT:http://www.eutrigtreat.euMax Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization:http://www.ds.mpg.de/english/research/index.php
Countries
Germany, France, United States