Toronto animal study showed "dramatic" results.The spice that gives the kick to many Indian curry dishes might also help prevent the ravages of heart failure, a surprising new Canadian animal study has concluded. This spice is also found in a synergistic combination with Immunotec's Omega 3 daily supplement.
Researchers at Toronto's University Health Network found that curcumin, the active ingredient in turmeric, both prevents and dramatically reverses enlargement of the heart in mice.
Enlarged hearts can lead to cardiac failure, a common and often fatal condition where the organ is unable to pump enough blood to keep the body functioning properly.
If similar results were one day duplicated in humans, the widely available spice could repair heart damage in a way no drug is able to do now, say researchers behind the study, to be published Friday in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Curcumin has the added benefit of causing virtually no toxic side effects in even relatively large doses.
Despite their earlier hopes for the ingredient, researchers were taken aback by the scope of the improvement it actually made to the mice hearts.
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"That was quite a surprise," said Dr. Maral Ouzounian, a research fellow at the network's Peter Munk Cardiac Centre. "It was quite dramatic."
The next step is to try to repeat the study in mice, then begin human studies, Dr. Ouzounian said. Even if it proves effective in people, however, curcumin as a treatment would probably not be on the market for another decade, said one scientist yesterday.
In the meantime, people should follow the usual steps for preventing heart failure: keeping blood pressure down, reducing cholesterol, exercising and eating healthily, the researchers said.
The new study is the latest to find promise in curcumin as a medicine, though it has long been used as a natural remedy in some Asian cultures. Human trials are underway to test the substance's efficacy in treating colorectal and pancreas cancer and Alzheimer's disease, after hopeful findings in animal studies.
Traditionally, it has been used in places such as India to heal cuts with a minimal of scarring, and fight everything from kidney disease to cataracts, though most of those applications have not been proven scientifically.
An animal study is a long way from a discovery applicable to humans, but the new research is good news, said Dr. Andreas Wielgosz, an Ottawa cardiologist and spokesman for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. The foundation partly funded the Toronto study.
"The potential is tremendous because of all the people who develop heart failure," he said. "Potentially, it would be very useful because it would reverse some of the damage to the heart muscle."
Heart failure affects about 400,000 Canadians, and 40%-50% die within five years of being diagnosed, according to foundation figures.
Factors such as high blood pressure that put excess stress on the heart sometimes lead to enlargement or thickening of the heart muscle - called cardiac hypertrophy. If the underlying causes of the hypertrophy are not countered with medication or lifestyle changes, the condition can lead to heart failure.
Though curcumin had never been tried before in treating heart disease, the team led by Dr. Peter Liu of the Munk centre speculated that its anti-inflammatory properties might be applicable to cardiac hypertrophy.
What they found is that the substance actually interacted with the nucleus of heart cells, blocking activation of the genes that are turned on in the hypertrophy process.
The resulting reversal of heart enlargement or thickening was striking, clearly visible with the naked eye and in ultrasound images, said Dr. Ouzounian. "The changes we saw ... would be clinically meaningful."
A different test showed that curcumin could also prevent hypertrophy from happening.
The ingredient's medicinal potential seems generally to stem from its ability to attack "what's going on in cells at the nucleus level," said the researcher.
Current treatment of hypertrophy centres around using drugs such as beta-blockers and ACE inhibitors to combat underlying causes like high blood pressure. No therapy at the moment can actually correct damage already done to the heart, Dr. Ouzounian said.
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