New study Alcohol harms the heart

How Alcohol Abuse Damages the Heart Muscle
Alcohol abuse is the cause of heart failure in a fifth of those with heart failure without a history of heart failure. A research group of the Mainz University Medical Center was able to show how ethanol favors the production of oxygen radicals with devastating consequences.

The fact that regular consumption of alcohol can lead to damage to the heart muscle and finally to cardiac muscle weakness - the alcoholic cardiomyopathy - is not new. Although it has been suggested that metabolic products of drinking alcohol ethanol play an important role in the development of alcoholic cardiomyopathy, the exact mechanism of its formation remained unresolved until recently.

. (Image: Yvonne Weis / fotolia.com)

Scientists have now succeeded in describing this mechanism precisely for the first time. They showed that in the cardiomyocytes ethanol through the degradation product acetaldehyde - via the activation of a specific enzyme (NADPH oxidase, NOX2) - leads to an increased production of oxygen radicals. They were able to show that these oxygen radicals in turn disrupt the function of the mitochondria as 'power plants' of the cell. Thus, the mitochondria can not fulfill their most important task of providing energy in the heart muscle cells.

The lack of chemical energy, so a key finding in the study, initially compromises the capacity of the heart muscle cells to contract. In the further course the cells die off and are replaced by scar tissue. It comes to irreparable damage to the heart muscle and thus to chronic heart failure. The study can be found here.