I read in the June issue of Discovery magazine (page
10) congestive heart failure may have a good treatment a few years down the
road. Details follow…..
Pythons (snakes) can fast for as much as a year
then eat something with more body weight than their own. This seems an
impossible situation for the heart to endure since it has to gear up to digest
the food and the fat content in the blood has a huge spike. Upon investigation
it was found the Python has three molecules in their blood that when stimulated
to act by necessary metabolism change will cause the heart muscle to grow by
40% in a period of 48 hours. These molecules have huge promise if cultivated
for use in human patients with heart failure. A weak heart could in theory
generate healthy new cells and strengthen itself.
As with most breakthroughs this will be studied for
some time and clinical trials in humans will be years away but the findings are
good enough that a company has been founded to continue the research on this
promising treatment.
This is of course just a quick overview of the
article but I found it interesting and you can read the full article in
Discovery if you wish.
Ken Dillenburg