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| | Summary: Effects of chronic beta-receptor blocker treatment on cardiac high-energy phosphate metabolism in heart failure |
 | | One hypothesis is that beta-blockers improve the energetic balance of the heart and act, at least in part, by preserving high-energy phosphate metabolism. |
 | | In experimental heart failure caused by chronic coronary ligation in the rat, the beta-blocker bisoprolol significantly improves cardiac function in parallel to preservation of phosphocreatine stores and intracellular ATP transfer rates, suggesting improved cardiac energetics as one mechanism of action. |
 | | Currently, a larger systematic placebo-controlled clinical trial of the functional and energetic effects of bisoprolol in dilated cardiomyopathy, followed sequentially by MR imaging and spectroscopy, is underway, which, when completed, should reveal whether beta-blockers in fact preserve high-energy phosphate metabolism in human heart failure. |
| www.kup.at /journals/summary/106.html (207 words) |
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