Scientists at Dundee University may have discovered the key to preventing damage to the heart muscle caused by cardiac arrest.
The research team learned that an enzyme called DHHC5 plays an important role in regulating the force of the contraction of the heart muscle.
However, during a heart attack the enzyme becomes overactive, which can cause permanent damage to the heart muscle. This can cause arrhythmia and even stop the heart from pumping blood around the body effectively.
Dr Will Fuller from the Medical Research Institute at the University of Dundee said: “There are multiple implications arising from our research.
“DHHC5 is a member of a family of enzymes which are implicated in progression of a variety of clinical conditions, including neurological diseases and cancer. So knowing more about how it works could lead to significant developments in those disease areas.
“Secondly, understanding how DHHC5 works raises the possibility that drugs may be able selectively to manipulate its activity. This means we might be able to interfere with the ‘bad’ things this enzyme does, like damaging heart muscle during a heart attack, without affecting the ‘good’ things such as establishing memories in the brain.”
The results of the research, which was supported by the British Heart Foundation, are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), one of the world’s most-cited and comprehensive multidisciplinary scientific journals.
Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the BHF, said: “The research, by showing the precise way in which the DHHC5 enzyme works, offers the potential to design urgently needed new drugs that may block its damaging effect on heart cells after a heart attack that can lead to debilitating heart failure.
“These results are an important first step towards the goal of developing new treatments to prevent damage after a heart attack, but it will require considerably more research to understand whether their promise can be converted into clinical benefit.”