Penn State College of Medicine researchers recently were awarded a five-year, $7 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health to conduct a series of studies on human circulation.
“Our goal is to gain a better understanding of how blood circulates in the body and how the bundles of nerves and nerve cells controlling many functions in the body help to regulate blood flow,” said Lawrence I. Sinoway, principal investigator for the grant, professor of medicine in the Penn State College of Medicine and program director in the Penn State General Clinical Research Center (GCRC). “Ultimately, this work may lead to new treatments for high blood pressure, heart failure and heart disease, and help to explain other mysteries of cardiovascular health.”
The grant will fund three projects. The first project, led by Sinoway, will examine the exercise pressor reflex, a communication mechanism between the brain and cardiovascular system active during exercise. Sinoway will compare the pressor reflex in healthy volunteers to people with heart failure, a disease affecting about 5 million Americans in which the heart weakens and has a reduced ability to pump blood. Information gained through his studies could lead to therapies to improve mobility and fitness for those with heart failure.
A second project will be led by Urs Leuenberger, professor of medicine in the Penn State College of Medicine and associate program director in the GCRC. His studies will examine how the nerves supplying the walls of the blood vessels and chemical factors produced in the body influence blood flow in response to hypoxia, a lower than normal blood oxygen level. Hypoxia commonly accompanies a variety of diseases of the heart and lungs. Through a finely-tuned interaction between nerve signals and chemical factors, hypoxia normally causes a rise in blood flow to skeletal muscle that helps maintain the supply of badly-needed oxygen. These studies could lead to information that may one day help physicians better treat conditions in which blood flow is not properly regulated.