Osaka, Japan – Heart transplant is a scary and serious surgery with high cost, but for patients with heart failure it can be the only option for cure. Now, however, a multi-institutional research team led by Osaka University has found that simply taking a supplement might be all that is needed for certain patients with heart failure to recover – no surgery needed.
In a study published in Nature Cardiovascular Research, the research team found that tricaprin, a natural supplement, can improve long-term survival and recovery from heart failure in patients with triglyceride deposit cardiomyovasculopathy (TGCV).
TGCV is a new type of heart disease; it results from an impaired ability of the heart and smooth muscle cells to break down triglycerides, which are a type of fat. Triglyceride accumulation in cells causes structural and functional damage in the heart and blood vessels. These changes result in clogged arteries and weakened heart muscles, which may cause debilitating symptoms and eventually heart failure, necessitating heart transplantation.
Luckily, through a series of experiments, researchers have identified how to diagnose the disease and developed a treatment that improves both disease symptoms and prognosis.
"Our previous research on the effect of tricaprin on patients with TGCV was very promising, but this time we decided to study how long the positive effects of the drug held up," says lead author of the study Ken-ichi Hirano.
To achieve this, the researchers enrolled patients diagnosed with the condition from Japanese registries and compared the survival rates between those who had received tricaprin and those who did not. The study involved 22 patients from 12 different hospitals who had received tricaprin and 190 controls. The researchers studied the effect of tricaprin on triglyceride breakdown; to overcome differences in the compared groups, 81 of the 190 controls were matched with the tricaprin group according to their baseline characteristics for comparison of survival rates.
"Not only did the positive effects on patient symptoms continue, but the function of the heart muscle improved and the structural changes that had developed were reversed as well," says Ken-ichi Hirano, the principle investigator for the Japan TGCV study group.
All the enrolled patients initially had heart failure; nevertheless, the 3- and 5-year survival rates were significantly higher in the tricaprin group (100% and 100%, respectively) compared with the control group (78.6% and 68.1%, respectively). Another favorable result was that several patients who had positive effects with tricaprin were on hemodialysis. These patients have a very poor prognosis without tricaprin.
"Spreading awareness of this disease to achieve early diagnosis and treatment offers patients the best chance for recovery," asserts Ken-ichi Hirano.
These study findings are based on data from Japanese patients. As a next step, studies should be carried out on patients of other ethnicities to support the evidence in favor of this promising drug. This new research delivers the hope that patients can not only sustain but also recover their hearts from debilitating heart failure.
