Researchers trying to make their way to better aid patients protect themselves from a heart failure are taking their indications from heart patients.

The work has its roots in a puzzling interest that medical doctors have long discovered in their patients: When faced with a coronary failure, those who have had a previous one frequently fare better than those who have never had one.

Researchers have been working for last twenty-five years to comprehend one reason why -- a process called ischemic preconditioning, where a temporary constraint of blood flow somehow fortifies cardiac tissues down the road.

A researchers group headed by Paul Brookes, associate professor of anesthesiology, pharmacology and physiology, University of Rochester Medical Centre (URMC) and graduate student Andrew Wojtovich, created novel methods in order to discover one of the key molecular agents involved.

That molecule, called the mitochondrial ATP-sensitive potassium channel, or mKATP, is central to ischemic preconditioning, but it has proven elusive for scientists seeking to isolate and describe it.

The Rochester group has produced a new method -quicker, less expensive, and easier than existing ways- to determine the mKATP activity. The group has also identified a molecule, called PIP2, which can restore the channel's action even once it has stopped working in a proper way.

The new work is likely to offer new signs about how the channel, which is thought to be central to our heart health, is regulated in the heart.

The ultimate objective of ischemic preconditioning, certainly, is not to condition the heart by intentionally causing a lack of blood flow to it. Rather, researchers like Brookes wish to make use of their knowledge to create a novel medicene or treatment to assist all patients better resist heart damage should it occur.

"Preconditioning has been shown to be effective in a variety of models in the laboratory, but it hasn't made it to the clinic yet," said Brookes, according to an URMC release.

"One would want to design a drug to get the benefit of ischemic preconditioning without actually impeding blood flow in any way."

These results were issued online in the Thursday edition of Circulation Research. (With Input from Agencies)