Oct 01 2020

Professor Toshikuni Sasaoka of the Department of Comparative and Experimental Medicine of the Brain Research Institute at Niigata University, in collaboration with Project Assistant Professor Toshihiro Yamaguchi, Project Assistant Professor Seitaro Nomura, and Professor Issei Komuro of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine of the University of Tokyo Hospital, Professor Atsuhiko Naito of the Department of Physiology of the Faculty of Medicine at Toho University, Assistant Professor Tomokazu Sumida of the Department of Neurology and Immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine, and others, conducted research focused on the functions of dopamine receptors in the heart, which have remained unknown so far. This is the first discovery of the roles of cardiac dopamine receptors in fatal arrhythmia associated with heart failure.

Given the current context of the aging society, the number of chronic heart failure patients is increasing, yet the best currently available medical treatments cannot prevent sudden death from fatal arrhythmia in patients with severe heart failure, including young patients. These research results are expected to significantly contribute to the development of treatments for preventing sudden death in patients with severe heart failure.

These research results were published in Nature Communications, a British scientific journal, on August 31, 2020 (Japan time).

Publication Details

Title: Cardiac Dopamine D1 Receptor Triggers Ventricular Arrhythmia in Chronic Heart Failure
Journal: Nature Communications
Authors: Toshihiro Yamaguchi, Tomokazu Sumida, Seitaro Nomura, Masahiro Satoh, Tomoaki Higo, Masamichi Ito, Toshiyuki Ko, Kanna Fujita, Mary E. Sweet, Atsushi Sanbe, Kenji Yoshimi, Ichiro Manabe, Toshikuni Sasaoka, Matthew R. G. Taylor, Haruhiro Toko, Eiki Takimoto, Atsuhiko T. Naito and Issei Komuro
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-1812-x