The American Heart Association reported that there are in the US only estimated 5.7 people living with a heart failure. Furthermore, the problem doesn’t stop there and each year about 670,000 new cases of heart failure are diagnosed and reported by the health care authorities.
The link between hypertension, heart failure and the factors increasing the risk to these medical conditions are widely studied around the globe. High blood pressure as a serious health condition may lead to coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke, kidney failure, and other health problems.
Recently the journal Pharmacogenomics reported the new study revealing new facts about a specific enzyme converting vitamin D into active hormone and its function in the body.
Although the action of vitamin D is thoroughly recorded, still there are some new findings about the role it plays in many physiologic functions in the body. It turns out that the live organism can’t tolerate the deficiency of vitamin D as it can cause to a whole spectrum of diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
Based on this knowledge, a new study was conducted to shed some light and to find any possible link between hypertension and vitamin D, and how these two along can contribute to the heart failure.
Heart failure is a serious heart problem when the heart can’t pump blood the way it should. It doesn’t mean that the heart stopped or is about to stop working.
The professor of pharmacology at the University of Michigan Medical School and one of the authors of the study Robert U. Simpson say: “This study is the first indication of a genetic link between vitamin D action and heart disease.”
The researchers found that vitamin D is activated by specific enzyme and the enzyme can’t work properly when it is inhibited by a specific gene variant found in the blood of the patient. When the patient suffers from high blood pressure and vitamin D in the body isn’t activated properly, the risk to suffer congestive heart failure increases up to twice.
“This study revealed that a critical enzyme absolutely required for production of the vitamin D hormone has a genetic variant associated with the development of congestive heart failure. If subsequent studies confirm this finding and demonstrate a mechanism, this means that in the future, we may be able to screen earlier for those most vulnerable and slow the progress of the disease ” — said Simpson.
It’s a fact that vitamin D increase immunity of the body while deficiency can lead to increased risk of various health conditions such as:
* increased risk of heart disease
* cancer
* diabetes
* autoimmune disease
The research of Simpson’s group involved 617 patients from the Marshfield Clinic Personalized Medicine Project. The genetic profiles of study participants were thoroughly studied and analyzed to identify five gene variants that regulate vitamin D level in the body and may contribute to hypertension.
The patents were divided into three groups according to their health condition:
* third had hypertension and congestive heart failure,
* third had high blood pressure alone
* third were included as healthy controls
“This initial study needs to be confirmed with a larger study that would permit analysis of the full cardiovascular profile of the population possessing the gene variant” — concluded Simpson.
The results of the study revealed interesting facts about CYP27B1, a variant of the gene that causes to congestive heart failure in patients with high blood pressure and vitamin deficiency. It turns out that there is a particular enzyme in the body that activates vitamin D and acts to convert it into active hormone, and when the enzyme is deactivated by the mutations of the gene, congestive heart failure occur.