Scientists have shown for the first time that the brain is involved in the development of a heart condition called Takotsubo syndrome (TTS), also known as ‘broken heart syndrome’.
In a new study they found that regions of the brain responsible for processing emotions and controlling the unconscious workings of the body, such as heart beat, breathing and digestion, do not communicate with each other as well in TTS patients as in healthy people.
TTS, or ‘broken heart syndrome’ is characterised by a sudden temporary weakening of the heart muscles which causes the left ventricle of the heart to balloon out at the bottom while the neck remains narrow.
Since it was first described in 1990, evidence has suggested that it is typically triggered by either severe emotional distress (such as grief, anger or fear) or reactions to happy or joyful events.
Patients develop chest pains and breathlessness, and it can lead to heart attacks and death. The condition is more common in women with just 10% of cases occurring in men.
Trying to get to the bottom of where it originates, researchers carried out MRI brain scans in 15 TTS patients and compared the scans with those from 39 healthy people.
“We found that TTS patients had decreased communication between brain regions associated with emotional processing and the autonomic nervous system, which controls the unconscious workings of the body, compared to the healthy people,” said Professor Christian Templin, principle investigator from the University Hospital Zurich.
Scientists discovered a link between altered activity in the brain and TTS, which Prof Templin said “strongly supports” the idea that the brain is involved.
“Importantly, the regions we’ve identified as communicating less with one another in TTS patients are the same brain regions that are thought to control our response to stress,” said Prof Templin. “This decrease in communication could negatively affect the way patients respond to stress and make them more susceptible to developing TTS.”
Researchers didn’t have MRI scans of patients’ brains before or at the time they developed TTS, so cannot say for certain that the decreased communication between brain regions caused the TTS or vice versa.
Co-author, Dr Jelena Ghadri, said: “We hope this study offers new starting points for studying TTS in terms of understanding that it is much more than ‘broken heart’ syndrome and clearly involves interactions between the brain and the heart, which are still not fully understood.”