Macrophages Make a Significant Contribution to Heart Failure

Researchers here implicate the immune cells known as macrophages in the progression of a particularly problematic form of heart failure. Macrophages are very important to the processes of tissue maintenance and regeneration, but they have several different characteristic states, or polarizations: one is inflammatory and aggressive, hindering regeneration, while the other is actively beneficial for regeneration. Researchers are finding that adjusting the proportion of these two states can be beneficial. The situation in heart failure - and a number of other age-related conditions - may well be made worse due to the balance in macrophage populations tipping away from assisting regeneration and towards chronic inflammation. In support of that view, stem cell therapies that have the primary outcome of reducing inflammation have been shown to be helpful in treating the form of heart failure examined here. Researchers have discovered that the immune cells called macrophages contribute to a type of heart failure for which there currently is no effective treatment, heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). The concept of heart failure traditionally referred to a loss of the organ's pumping capacity, which is called systolic heart failure. But in HFpEF the heart retains the ability to pump or eject blood into the circulation. What is compromised is the ability of the heart muscle to relax and allow blood to flow into the left ventricle, reducing the amount of bl...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs