JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – A team of researchers at East Tennessee State University is in search of a cure for heart failure and believes the answer may lie within a person’s gut.
Dr. Eric Beaumont, an electrophysiologist and an associate professor in the Quillen College of Medicine’s Department of Biomedical Sciences, is leading the research project that is looking at how a current treatment for heart failure may be benefiting patients in multiple ways.
Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is a treatment in which electric impulses stimulate the large nerve in the neck that runs from the brain to all major organs. Through that stimulation, a person’s heart rate is slowed, thus protecting the heart.
“It is thought that VNS is beneficial because of its ability to do that, which is probably true,” Beaumont said. “But we think VNS is also protecting the intestine.”
Patients suffering from heart failure tend to have a disturbed intestinal microbiome, making inflammation more common within the body, and that inflammation is thought to provoke cardiovascular disease. “We think protecting the intestine limits inflammation and then, the progression of heart failure indirectly,” Beaumont said.
Through a nearly $24,000 Research Development Committee grant from the university, Beaumont and his fellow researchers will explore the effects of VNS on the intestine and aim to better understand the relationship between gut bacteria, VNS and heart health in an effort to optimize treatment for greater patient success.
“We still don’t know which stimulation parameters work the best. Duration and intensity of stimulation are important and those parameters make a difference. We want to test different strategies to determine just how significant the intestine is in all of this,” Beaumont said. “The ultimate goal is a cure for heart failure. There isn’t one right now. The medicines we have can be helpful for some, but we want to improve treatment so that it works for everyone, and without adverse side effects. To accomplish this, we have to focus on more than just the heart. Heart failure affects the whole body – from the brain to the bowels.”
Beaumont, who is also a member of ETSU’s Center of Excellence in Inflammation, Infectious Disease and Immunity (CIIDI), is joined on the project by fellow Department of Biomedical Sciences faculty and CIIDI members Drs. Krishna Singh and Robert Schoborg, as well as Gatton College of Pharmacy associate professor Dr. Stacy Brown and Department of Psychology associate professor Dr. Matt Palmatier. Experiments specific to this project will be managed by Dr. Regenia Phillips Campbell, a post-doctoral fellow in Beaumont’s lab.