Heart health A heart attack is bad enough in itself, but toughing it out alone could be worse for your health and survival rate than if you have a partner to rely on, says new research from Ohio State University, Scientists there monitored mice who had had a heart attack for seven days afterwards, comparing symptoms of those who were isolated and those who were left to recover with a ‘partner’.
Male mice were housed with a female mouse for two weeks prior to the induced heart attack; the other group of male mice were housed alone. All the mice who had a heart attack were resuscitated, then their heart rates were checked via an ECG-like device at 24 hours afterwards, as well as three and seven days after. Their overall health was also checked.
What the researchers found was that both groups of mice showed damage to their ability to regulate their heart rate after the attack, but that the group who had been allowed some ‘mouse contact’ showed significantly less – their heart rate was controlled in a more normal manner, indicating less damage. The reduction in damage wasn’t limited to heart rate variability, the partnered mice also showed less brain damage.
While it’s not ideal to extrapolate from rodent studies to humans when assessing medications, for example, mice, like humans, are social animals and so there is good reason to believe that the human response would be similar. Because survival rate after suffering a heart attack is directly linked to heart rate variability afterwards, this new evidence could be crucial in helping to improve long-term heart health as well as avoiding heart attack-related fatalities.
First published September 2, 2010