Stomach tries to help out in a heart attack

In an international research breakthrough, New Zealand scientists have discovered the stomach plays a key role in trying to protect the body during a heart attack.

The internationally renowned Christchurch Cardioendocrine Research Group will again make world headlines when America's Endocrinology Journal publishes its hormone research on obesity and heart attacks.

A team of consultants and researchers, led by Professor Mark Richards at the Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences, has broken ground in the dash to pin down the exact function of the hormone ghrelin.

The team found that ghrelin, the most potent human appetite stimulant known, causes arteries in the heart to constrict.

Further research revealed that during a heart attack, the stomach almost totally eliminates ghrelin from the system - giving the body its best possible chance of survival.

Research fellow Chris Pemberton said it was still not known if the stomach suddenly stopped producing ghrelin during a heart attack, or if it was simply flushed through the kidneys and out of the body at a higher rate.

"The heart has a problem, such as a blood clot, and it's somehow sending a signal to the stomach and the stomach thinks, 'Right, drop ghrelin,' because it's the last thing [the heart] needs."

The team has also identified a related form of ghrelin, which it has called C-ghrelin. Its function is similar, but largely unknown.

However, research has shown C-ghrelin is more sensitive to heart attacks than ghrelin. This means there is potential for a diagnostic test to predict a looming heart attack.

Dr Pemberton said ghrelin, an old Indonesian word meaning to grow, was one of the biggest discoveries in endocrinology (hormones) last century. The findings of the Christchurch group would be among the most important since its 1999 discovery.

- NZPA