Voluntary Exercise in Heart Failure Rats

Exercise guidelines exist for the management and treatment of patients with most cardiovascular diseases, but where does pulmonary arterial hypertension fit into the exercise training therapy picture? In this podcast Guest Editor Shawn Bender interviews lead author Ed White (University of Leeds) and content expert Daphne Merkus (Erasmus MC, Netherlands) about the work by Natali and co-authors, which used an innovative rat model of voluntary wheel running to determine whether exercise training could be beneficial in the treatment of pulmonary artery hypertension (PAH) and right ventricular failure. The authors found that, while wheel running did not prevent the development of PAH, it did significantly delay the median time to heart failure. Will the work by White and collaborators lead to new “off the shelf” exercise training treatments, which could be utilized by clinicians in the treatment of human patients with PAH? Listen and find out.

Antonio José Natali, Ewan Douglas Fowler, Sarah Calaghan, Ed White Voluntary exercise delays heart failure onset in rats with pulmonary artery hypertension Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol, published August 1, 2015, DOI: 10.1152/ajpheart.00262.2015.