Heart protective effect of red blood cells is enhanced by nitrate-rich vegetable food plan

Red blood cells exposed to oxygen deficiency protect against myocardial infarction, in line with a brand new KI study published within the Journal of Clinical Investigations. The study also shows that the protective effect is enhanced by a nitrate-rich vegetable food plan.

Red blood cells carry oxygen from the lungs to the entire body’s cells and carbon dioxide back to the lungs. A brand new study, conducted at Karolinska Institutet in collaboration with Karolinska University Hospital, now shows that red blood cells have an intrinsic function of protecting against heart injury brought on by myocardial infarction.

The effect is enhanced by a food plan containing nitrate-rich vegetables, equivalent to arugula and other green leafy vegetables.

“This effect was also shown in a clinical study in patients with hypertension who were randomly assigned to eat nitrate-rich vegetables or a food plan low in nitrates,” says John Pernow, Professor of Cardiology on the Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet in Solna and senior physician at Karolinska University Hospital, and the study’s corresponding creator along with Jon Lundberg, professor on the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet.

A part of the study was conducted through experiments with red blood cells from mice that were added to a myocardial infarction model with hearts from mice. Before the experiment, the red blood cells were exposed to low oxygen pressure, while nitrate was added to the drinking water.

In a clinical study, red blood cells were collected from patients with hypertension who were randomly assigned a nitrate-rich food plan with green leafy vegetables or a food plan with nitrate-poor vegetables. These red blood cells got to the corresponding myocardial infarction model with hearts from rats.

“The outcomes show each that the red blood cells convey protection against injury in the center within the event of low oxygen levels, and the way that protection might be enhanced through an easy dietary advice. This may increasingly be of great importance for patients liable to myocardial infarction,” says the study’s first creator Jiangning Yang, a researcher on the Department of Medicine, Solna, Karolinska Institutet.

The following step within the research is to develop additional drugs that may activate the protective signaling mechanism in red blood cells to offer protection to the body’s tissues and cells within the event of oxygen deficiency.

“As well as, we’d like to map how the blood cells transmit their protective signal to the center muscle cells,” says John Pernow.

The study is a collaboration between researchers from, amongst others, Karolinska Institutet, Karolinska University Hospital, Tohoku University, Japan, Heinrich-Heine-University, Germany, and Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany.

The research was funded by the Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation, the Swedish Research Council and Region Stockholm’s ALF project funds. Jon Lundberg and Eddie Weitzberg hold patents related to therapies based on inorganic nitrate.