MedWire News: Eating curcumin, an ingredient in the curry spice turmeric, may help prevent heart failure, results of a study suggest.
Turmeric has been used in traditional Indian and Chinese medicine for centuries to heal cuts and bruises and help reduce the risk of scarring.
Lead researcher Dr Peter Liu, from Toronto General Hospital in Ontario, Canada, and colleagues explain that previous studies have indicated that curcumin may also help prevent biological processes that can lead to an enlarged heart, called cardiac hypertrophy, and heart failure.
To investigate, the researchers studied heart cells from rats that were exposed to curcumin in the laboratory. They also studied the effects of feeding curcumin to mice that underwent a procedure to induce cardiac hypertrophy.
The team found that, in both experiments, curcumin prevented or reversed biological processes that lead to an enlarged heart. And in the second experiment, the heart function of mice fed circumin improved significantly.
Further analysis revealed that curcumin helps prevent and reduce heart enlargement by blocking certain genes from producing excessive amounts of proteins linked to heart enlargement.
"Curcumin's ability to shut off one of the major switches right at the chromosome source where the enlargement and scarring genes are being turned on is impressive," said Dr Liu.
If further studies in humans confirm their findings, the researchers explain that circumin could, in the future, provide a cheap and effective means of preventing heart failure.
Dr Liu concluded: "Whether you are young or old; male or female; the larger your heart is, the higher your risk is for developing heart attacks or heart failure in the future.
"However, until clinical trials are done, we don't recommend patients to take curcumin routinely. You are better off to take action today by lowering blood pressure, reducing cholesterol, exercising and healthy eating."
The research is published in an advance online pubication by the Journal of Clinical Investigation.