Charitable Fund recently awarded a grant to Rush University Medical Center.

Although systolic heart failure — impairment in strength of the heart muscle — has long been the most widely recognized type of heart failure, diastolic heart failure — impaired relaxation and compliance of the heart muscle — is increasingly prevalent and difficult to detect. Patients with a joint occurrence of high blood glucose, high blood pressure, abdominal obesity and adverse lipid profiles, also known as “metabolic syndrome,” are at especially high risk. Almost half of adults over the age of 45 with metabolic syndrome have diastolic dysfunction.

Because diastolic heart failure is not reversible, prevention is key to combating the disease. The William G. McGowan Charitable Fund’s grant to Rush supports the research of a collaborative team led by Principal Investigator Lynda H. Powell, PhD, chairperson of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Rush. The team will investigate new screening strategies and work to determine whether healthy lifestyle changes will reverse the metabolic syndrome and, as such, prevent diastolic heart failure and extend the length and quality of patients’ lives.

A collaboration between the Department of Preventive Medicine and the Section of Cardiology will make it possible to use echocardiogram with tissue Doppler imaging to evaluate the overall diastolic function of the heart and link it to a variety of modifiable lifestyle factors in patients with the metabolic syndrome.

A multidisciplinary team of investigators from preventive medicine, behavioral sciences, endocrinology and nutrition will determine if an innovative lifestyle program can reverse the metabolic syndrome in patients with this diagnosis. This lifestyle program jointly targets diet, physical activity and stress and encourages patients to discover that healthy living is all about enjoying life.

“We are facing a health care crisis that is due largely to rising rates of chronic diseases such as heart failure. These diseases can be prevented by healthy living. But people do not want to change their lifestyles because they believe that health and deprivation go hand in hand.” Powell said. “This grant from The William G. McGowan Charitable Fund will help us to help people with cardiovascular risk factors learn new habits that are not only healthy but also make them happy. Our goal is to show that these habits translate into longer, disability-free lives.”