Hydraulic forces help to fill the heart
[PRESS RELEASE 2 MARCH 2017] Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden have contributed to a recent discovery that the heart is filled with the aid of hydraulic forces, the same as those involved in hydraulic brakes in cars. The findings, which are presented in the journal Scientific Reports, open avenues for completely new approaches to the treatment of heart failure.The mechanisms that cause blood to flow into the ventricles of the heart during the filling, or diastolic, phase are only partly understood. While the protein titin in the heart