Nose spray that calms a racing heart in minutes
ASPrAy squirted up the nose could be a fastacting new treatment for faulty heartbeats. Tests show the spray restores heart rate to normal in less than three minutes, compared with at least half an hour with current medicines. Scientists predict it could bring almost instant relief to thousands of patients who endure long and frightening episodes where their pulse goes haywire.
The spray is designed to treat supraventricular tachycardia (SvT), a condition that affects more than 100,000 people in the UK, where the heart suddenly starts to beat rapidly due to an electrical abnormality in the heart.
An attack can last several hours and leave patients feeling dizzy as the heart contracts too quickly for its chambers to fill with blood between beats, cutting blood flow to the brain.
The heart has four chambers, and the rate at which it beats is controlled by the sinus node, a group of nerves in the top-right chamber, the right atrium.
It sends out electrical impulses that kick-start each heartbeat.
The impulses travel to an area called the atrioventricular node. This node slows them down to allow the bottom two chambers (the ventricles) to fill with blood. once the ventricles are full, the node releases the impulses again to pump blood out to the body.
In SvT, this process goes haywire. As a result, heart rate can soar to 250 beats a minute.
The condition can affect quality of life if episodes are frequent and lengthy. Most patients are treated with prescription drugs called calcium channel blockers, which slow down the rate at which heart muscle contracts. But these can take 30 minutes or more to have an effect.
Patients may also undergo catheter ablation — where an electric probe is used to destroy faulty cells in the heart.
The nose spray could be a more convenient and speedier treatment. It contains etripamil, a calcium channel blocker already used as a tablet to treat SvTt. nasal sprays act more
U.S. DOCTORS have developed models of patients’ hearts to make ablation procedures, to correct heart rhythm problems, more effective. MRI scans of patients’ hearts were converted into 3D virtual models. A computer program was used to predict the signalling pattern of each cell and pinpoint the area that needed treating. The results ‘suggest we can remove a lot of the guesswork, standardise treatment, and decrease the variability in outcomes, so patients remain free of arrhythmia’, said the researchers at Johns Hopkins University.
quickly because the liquid drug is rapidly absorbed by tiny blood vessels lining the nasal cavity.
In a recent study, researchers gave the spray to 104 patients. The results, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, showed the spray restored normal heart rhythm in up to 95 per cent of patients. More than half were better within three minutes and one patient was back to normal in less than two minutes.
researchers hope the spray could become widely available in the next couple of years.
Commenting on the new treatment, emily McGrath, a senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: ‘This study shows promising results.
‘If patients had access to a nasal spray which relieved their symptoms in a matter of minutes, it would make a huge difference to their lives.’