Love your heart
Heart disease kills almost two million people a year in the EU, so it is important to find different ways of keeping your heart healthy. This September, Horizon examines innovative ways of treating heart disease, including electric gene therapy to prevent heart attacks and a miniature heart implant. Plus, we look at how 4D imaging of mice and zebrafish can help regenerate human hearts.
Around 15 million people across Europe suffer from congestive heart failure, a chronic condition where the heart is not able to pump enough blood around the body, but according to Sofia Marchã, a senior policy officer for patients and research at the European Heart Network in Brussels, Belgium, a new health app could make living with the condition easier.
Broken hearts have long influenced songsters and poets, but scientists have also been occupied by its literal meaning and are now hoping to use electric gene therapy as a revolutionary new treatment for cardiac conditions.
Real-time imaging of embryonic heart growth and regeneration could uncover the cause of adult heart disease and lead to potential treatments, according to Dr Miguel Torres, a developmental biologist at the Spanish National Centre for Cardiovascular Research.
A miniaturised heart implant is one of the most promising ways in which scientists are hoping to tackle cardiovascular disease, the world’s biggest killer, which claims the lives of almost 2 million people every year in the EU alone.
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