A Hormone for Heart Failure?

A Fight for Every Breath

Acute heart failure is scary. You can't breathe deep enough to satisfy your body's need for oxygen. Your lungs begin to fill with fluid and your heart isn't strong enough to pump it out. You feel like you're drowning even though you're sucking in air as best you can.

Even with immediate treatment, there's still a 30% chance you won't survive the attack. (1)

Fortunately, new research reveals a way to treat heart failure that can give you immediate relief
and improve your long-term survival.

An Overlooked Hormone That Treats Heart Failure

The secret to treating acute heart failure is inside your own body. It's a hormone called relaxin.

Relaxin is typically thought of as a female hormone that helps pregnancy progress the way it's supposed to. Doctors noticed that the heart has receptors for relaxin. That combined with animal studies showing relaxin can work to dilate blood vessels, led doctors to wonder about using relaxin to treat heart conditions. (2)

It turns out that as a treatment for heart failure, relaxin is amazing.

First, understand that the typical treatment for acute heart failure involves a complicated procedure to drain fluids from the lungs and a dangerous cocktail of drugs. Researchers have been seeking a safer, more effective way to treat heart failure for a long time.

In this study, researchers treated patients admitted with acute heart failure either with a placebo or with relaxin. The patients receiving relaxin recovered their ability to breathe faster and more completely. (3)

But hold on -- that's not even the best part.

During routine follow ups, researchers found that the relaxin patients were less likely to be hospitalized or to die during the next 60 days-less than three percent compared with more than 17 percent in the placebo group. (4)

Between two and six months after the initial hospitalization, none of the patients who received relaxin died due to heart problems, but nearly 15 percent of the placebo patients had. (5)

So far, relaxin doesn't appear to have any adverse side effects.

This Is An Exciting Moment For Heart Disease Patients

Needless to say, as a cardiologist, I'm very excited about the promise of relaxin. Because it's a hormone, your body knows what to do with it. It's true that a hormone imbalance can cause problems. But, when used properly, a natural hormone has a far lower chance of causing dangerous side effects than a typical drug.

Currently, clinical trials for relaxin are still underway, but expect this new treatment to be approved
soon. Hope is on the horizon for heart failure patients. Remember, it's always important to discuss changes to your diet, exercise, or supplements with your doctor. Next time find out how researchers are discovering that a simple herbal supplement is as effective as drugs in treating Alzheimer's disease.

1. "Acute Heart Failure," Zealand Pharma. Viewed 4/2/09
2. "Relaxin," Wikipedia.com. Viewed 4/3/09
3. Teerlink JR, et al. "Relaxin for the treatment of patients with acute heart failure (Pre-RELAX-AHF): a multicentre, randomised, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, dose-finding phase IIb study," The Lancet. 3/29/2009
4. Teerlink JR, et al. "Relaxin for the treatment of patients with acute heart failure (Pre-RELAX-AHF): a multicentre, randomised, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, dose-fi nding phase IIb study," The Lancet. 3/29/2009
5. "Hormone Reduces Mortality in Heart Patients With High BP," Drug Digest. 3/29/2009