reduced oxygen supply to the heart muscles, making cells become acidic and sends a signal to the heart cells to die. Despite decades of investigation, scientists were not able to discover a medicine that can prevent this death signal. According to Australian scientists, this is one of the reasons why heart disease remains the major cause of mortality worldwide.
Dr. Sarah Scheuer is one of the researchers at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, which is involved in the spider venom investigation. She believes that the discovery will also benefit transplant patients. She said, “We are using this special little peptide from a small portion of the funnel web spider venom. Well, what we found is this peptide is able to help protect the heart where there is a lack of blood supply or blood flow. And we found that this can be used both not only in heart transplantation, but also when the donor heart [is] out of the body during the transplant process. But potentially could also be used in heart attack victims to help minimize the damage that occurs.”
According to Australian researchers, the chemical found in spider venom impairs the heart’s capacity to perceive acid after a cardiac arrest, causing the death message to be interrupted. They stated that in the future, they wanted Hi1a to be provided by first responders in the ambulances. The discovery expands on previous research that demonstrated that a small protein discovered in the poison of the Fraser Island funnel-web spider significantly improved stroke recovery in patients. The protein has been tested in human heart cells, and the Australian team hopes to begin clinical trials in two to three years for both stroke and heart disease. The findings of the study were published in the journal Circulation.
