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Muscular Heart Failure Patients
May Have a Better Chance at Survival
University of Alberta research has discovered heart failure
patients with more muscle have the potential to increase
their length of life.
Researchers from the University of Alberta School of Public Health,
studied 140 patients with heart failure. Study participants underwent
a special scan to measure their muscle mass and body fat.
The new research found that having more muscle was associated
with better nutritional status and lower severity of heart failure,
while higher body fat was associated with increased inflammation
and reduced exercise capacity. This suggests that in patients with
heart failure having more muscle mass and lower fat may be
beneficial.
The team’s research was published this month in the journal
Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
The study also discovered that testing just the body mass index
(BMI) of heart failure patients doesn’t accurately measure their
body fat status. They found 41 per cent of the participants were
inaccurately classified by BMI.
Many who had a high body weight but not high body fat were
mislabelled as obese and others who did not weigh a lot but had
a high amount of body fat were mis-labelled as normal by BMI.
This research has direct implications for weight management
guidelines and adds that to date there is a shortage of evidence
to guide a clinician’s decision about when to recommend weight
loss to a patient with heart failure.
While this study provides potential explanations of how muscle
and fat could possibly play a role in the survival of heart failure
patients, the researchers believe there isn’t enough evidence to
make specific recommendations. The team plans to conduct
treatment studies that examine the effects of intentional weight
gain and loss on the survival and quality of life in these patients.
University of Alberta (2010, July 22). Muscular heart failure
patients may have a better chance at survival, study suggests.
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