Vitamin D may cut heart failure risk after heart attack

Besides helping build strong bones and muscles, Vitamin D may also protect heart tissue and prevent heart failure after a heart attack, finds a study conducted on mice.

Vitamin D prevents excessive scarring and thickening of heart tissue following a heart attack, which may help reduce the risk of heart failure.

For the study, published in the journal Heart Lung and Circulation, researchers used mouse models to investigate the impact of 1,25D – a form of Vitamin D that interacts with hormones – on the cardiac colony-forming unit fibroblasts (cCFU-Fs)cells that form scar tissue after a heart attack. 

Heart attacks occur when blood supply to the heart is blocked, leading to tissue damage. This triggers an inflammatory response where the cCFU-Fs replace the damaged tissue with collagen-based scar tissue.