Vinculin the Secret to Longer Life? Protein Found to Keep Heart Muscles Pumping

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Scientists have discovered a protein that could keep aging heart beating for many years.

Vinculin, a protein that could keep heart muscles beating was discovered by a team of scientists from Johns Hopkins, San Diego State University, UC San Diego, the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, and the National Institute on Aging, according to the International Business Times.

In the findings published in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers found that increased vinculin protein levels could keep the heart in working shape even as it ages.  

Among all the organs in the body, the heart is the only one that produces few new cells but it is able to function throughout a lifetime. it generates an average of 2.5 billion beats.

The research stemmed from a series of experiments on the heart muscles of adult and aging fruit flies, rats and monkeys. Scientists found that vinculin levels in all three animals rose with age, suggesting that it keeps the heart pumping.

"Vinculin appears to be at the heart of a natural defence mechanism that reinforces the ageing heart cell and helps it better sense and respond to age-related changes," said senior author Adam Engler, professor at UC-San Diego and scientists at the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine.

In order to find out how vinculin protein helps keep the heart functioning well into old age, researchers studied fruit flies as they are well-known for having short lives, giving scientists a speedier study result. They found that vinculin improved cardiac performance.

"Encircling the cell like a rubber band, vinculin appears to keep its interior impeccably arranged and in doing so ensures that form and performance remain intact," said Anthony Cammarato, a co-researcher from Johns Hopkins, as per Medical Xpress.

Additionally, fruit flies that were altered to create more vinculin in the heart survived 150 percent longer compared to others.

The research was done to know if vinculin was directly responsible or have no part in the development of heart disease and age-related heart failure. Cammarato added vinculin is a "good guy" as it helps slow down the decline of the heart as it grows old.

"Our findings reveal that vinculin fuels beneficial structural and physiologic changes in aging heart cells, and it can be an important therapeutic target to slow down the heart muscle's inevitable demise," said Cammarato.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 5 million in the U.S. have heart failure and about half who are diagnosed die within 5 years.

Some of the most common risk factors for heart failure include having high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary heart disease, obesity and regular tobacco smoking to name a few.