A brainy treatment for heart failure

Heart Failure Respiratory difficulty and diaphragm weakness are known symptoms of heart failure, but they are usually attributed to pulmonary edema damaging the diaphragm through physical stress. Foster et al. found that this is not the only contributing factor. In mouse models, diaphragm weakness developed even in heart failure without pulmonary edema. The authors linked this observation to changes in angiotensin II and β-adrenergic signaling, which result in centrally controlled ventilatory overdrive. Drugs targeting β-adrenergic signaling were effective in preventing ventilatory overdrive and subsequent diaphragmatic injury, but only if they penetrated the blood-brain barrier. Sci. Transl. Med. 9 , eaag1303 (2017).