An analysis of blood samples from thousands of study participants, led by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center, revealed 18 proteins associated with both heart failure and frailty, conditions that commonly develop in late life. Their findings, published in JAMA Cardiology, could lead to new strategies to jointly predict risk, administer preventive approaches, or treat these conditions, which often occur together.
“Our findings support shared biological pathways underlying both heart failure and frailty, suggesting interventions to prevent or treat one outcome may help decrease the burden of the other,” said study leader Amil Shah, M.D., M.P.H., Professor of Internal Medicine in the Division of Cardiology and in the Peter O’Donnell Jr. School of Public Health at UT Southwestern.
As the world’s population ages, so do the prevalence and incidence of heart failure and frailty, disorders that tend to occur in the seventh decade of life and beyond. Heart failure is characterized by an inability of the heart to keep up with the body’s demands; symptoms of frailty are a general loss of physical function, with features often including unintentional weight loss, physical exhaustion, and low physical activity. Frailty occurs in up to half of people with heart failure, and the risk of heart failure increases in people with frailty.
Although inflammation has been implicated in both of these multisystem disorders, whether heart failure and frailty share molecular pathways has been unknown.
By UT Southwestern Medical Center
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