Professor Neil Herring leads study showing special pacemaker can reverse heart failure

A new study led by Professor Neil Herring, Exeter College Tutorial Fellow in Medical Science, and supported by the British Heart Foundation has found that a pacemaker treatment for heart failure can reduce the size of the main pumping chamber by 50%. Moreover, the pacemaker helps switch the fuel the heart uses from sugar back towards fat to increase its energy production and this appears to be key to producing a stronger heartbeat.

The complex research published in the European Heart Journal, involved 14 volunteers and experiments both in a state-of-the-art MRI scanner and during pacemaker implantation when measurements of flow and pressure could be taken alongside blood sampling from within the heart to assess its fuel uptake. This allowed the researchers to track the heart’s function in response to the pacemaker and assess how it used and produced energy when patients’ hearts were supplied with either glucose or a mixture of fats, directly into the bloodstream. Much to their surprise, the team found that the response to the pacemaker was to increase usage of fat and ketones within two minutes of it being turned on, and that this was the best determinant of how the heart then improved over the subsequent six months.

The research was a collaboration between Consultant Cardiologists and British Heart Foundation Fellows Professor Neil Herring, in Oxford’s Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, and Professor Oliver Rider and Dr Andrew Lewis in the Oxford Centre for Clinical Magnetic Resonance Research.

Read more about this research in the European Heart Journal.